


Without Question (Steve Rogers x Reader)

by MaladaptiveNinjaReturns



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Aliens, Angst, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Smut, Symbiote - Freeform, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2019-11-04 08:39:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17895176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaladaptiveNinjaReturns/pseuds/MaladaptiveNinjaReturns
Summary: It was supposed to be the end. But it marked your beginning.





	1. Chapter 1

_What would you do, if I told you about your fate?_  
If I told you that the rivers of dimension flowed in a specific manner just so you could be born, would you believe me? Or would it be better to say that your obscure, but ordinary, self was created to cross paths with certain people during your lifetime; that you were made to do the inevitable of tormenting souls as you ached to nurture yours, waning in the hopes of finding love; that you did find solace in arms of a soul you least expected it from.  
What if I told you that you were never destined to meet a man- a man out of time, fighting for what was right, saving the world and wanting to sacrifice himself for the greater good- but you put yourself in his path and saved his life?  
What if I told you that in doing so, you drove your world to destruction?  
Would you still do it?

_Without question._

* * *

“Stacie, did you pee on my roses again?”  
I look at my little corgi with menacing eyes, trying to create as much sternness as I can conjure at the loaf of fur standing in front of me.  She huffs and looks back with a smile, waiting for me to break my anger. When I don’t, she puts her paws on my bent knees and boops her nose on to mine.  
“You have to stop doing that, Stace,” I sigh at the sight of her brilliant brown orbs, “This is the third time our roses have died. Your meds are way too strong for them. Go pee on that wild grass instead.” This one is such a handful.  
 _Well, we both are, in a way- testing each other’s patience every day. I don’t know how she puts up with me at all._

Stace goes out into the meadow behind the house as a blue butterfly passes by, following it into the wild grass growing on the outskirts of the forest behind us, allowing me to go back to make another attempt at growing something, anything, in my tiny garden with the most scenic view.  
The sky is such a clear blue today as if Bob Ross felt like cheering up the entire land by painting it in such a happy hue after the last frosty winds of the winter passed. The birds chirp all around us as I open up the bag of compost to lay some down in the little pit I dug for my cherry blossom sapling. It really is a perfect day to start growing something new.  
The breeze blows with the smell of the forest in the air, hinting at the fresh leaves coming out at the first call of spring.  
My grandma’s radio cum cassette player sits on the patio with her collection of music from all over the world. AL Bowlly’s ‘Love Is The Sweetest Thing’ plays as it brings back memories of her singing in the kitchen as she made breakfast in the first light of the morning sun for me, singing every word and swinging to every tiny note. God, how she glowed under the sunlight as she twirled effortlessly from one corner to another.  
Before I know it, I’m slow dancing to the violin, my gloved hands away from my body as I try to twirl from memory. The notes are so smooth, changing with such grace. And before I know it, the song changes.   
So does something around me.  
I hear Stacie’s bark from somewhere near the forest edge. I open my eyes and the colours around me are not the same as they were. The sky has turned grey without any notice, clouds gathering at the edge of the forest. The birds are no longer making any sounds but disappearing somewhere in a flock. The breeze runs through my tresses, cold and uncomfortable, making every hair on my body rise at the thought of some unforeseen danger.  
“Stace!” I shout into the air turning cold around me, making me wish I had brought my jacket outside. Ella Fitzgerald’s voice sings 'I’ve Got a Feeling I’m Falling’ as I hear Stacie’s 'stranger danger’ bark get closer.  
“Stacie! Come back. Now!” I command into the air. She knows this stern voice way too well to stay outside. Even though this is supposed to be the safe place, my thoughts don’t stop from going towards the worst scenarios.  
 _What’s with your mood, weather? We were having such a good time_ , I think as I gather the unused gardening tools and stack them into the toolbox. While I do so, an unfamiliar odour fills the air around me- something salty and rusty with a hint of the forest pines. It’s a really funny smell. Funny and spine-chilling for some reason.  
 _That’s it. I’m going inside._  
I look towards the forest edge for Stacie and my heart finally calms down a little to see her running back towards me in full speed. What I do not notice on time is that she’s barking the same bark she was two minutes ago.  
And just as it seeps in, a figure comes out of the woods. A figure of a man. His pale skin stands in contrast to the dull forest behind him as he looks in my direction. Something glistens in his eyes. Something wild but I cannot make out what that is from the distance between us. For some reason, I stand frozen in his gaze for a moment before a chill runs down my back.  
I step back to turn around and run towards the safety of my house. But before I can do that, I run into something else.  
All I remember is a distant shout from someone as a piercing pain runs through me before my head hits the ground. A mind-numbing agony coursing through me, drowning my own screams as my vision gets blurry. Feeling my ears bleed with the unbearable static surrounding me, I see a face hovering over me- a soft face- trying to keep me from giving up to the unbearable before everything goes dark.

* * *

The forest stands still around them, the one welcoming noise being the occasional sounds from the crickets. The only animal they can see is a lone black haired monkey that sits at the topmost branch in the thick shade, watching the trio intently as he helps himself to some berries.  
“So, where do you think they went?”  
Clint asks as he climbs a tree to get a better view of the surroundings.  
“If it isn’t for that monkey,” Natasha announces, never lowering her weapon, “my guess is they went underground.”  
“No sign of them on the road,” Sam’s voice comes over the comms.  
“Keep looking. They couldn’t have gone far.” Steve declares to everyone around him.  
The clear blue of the sky is already changing its tones to dull, ominous grey. Something barks in the distance. _A dog? No_ , Steve thinks to himself. “I don’t like it,” he says under his breath as a flock of birds flow from the top branches surrounding them.  
“Hey, Cap,” Clint calls out, still rooted over the branch, as he readies his bow and carefully plants an arrow over it, “have you ever seen a monkey with nothing but pure darkness for its eyes?”  
Just as Clint aims at the animal sitting opposite him, nearly twenty feet away, the mammal jumps for the ground, changing into a huge four-limbed creature that looks a lot similar to a human except for his leather-like black skin, pure dark pits for eyes, devoid of any sclera, and fangs for all fifty teeth. If that isn’t enough, the limbs turn into claws to fight off the threat that now surrounds it from all sides.  
The creature is given no time to register as Clint’s poison arrow strikes him right through his chest while Natasha’s gun shoots at his elongated thick skull.  
“The conjunction behind his neck,” Bruce’s voice broke through the comms. “Go for the conjunction behind his neck! It’ll weaken his nervous system in one blow and kill him on the second.”  
Steve doesn’t have to be instructed twice as he grabs his shield, kicks the creature down to his knees and stabs right where the skull attaches itself to the creature’s protruding backbone. Within seconds, the shrieking menace is down on the ground, his affected nerves lighting up under his coarse skin with an unrhythmic red glow.  
“Where is the other one?”  
Steve stands in front of the creature that is gasping for air, his wheezing turning into a cackle.   
“Captain, we have a situation,” Clint calls out from above, his eyes focusing on something in the far off distance.  
“You’ll never have her,” the creature’s words croak at Steve, who readies his shield for the second blow.  
“Stace!” The chilling wind brings a voice with it, forcing the captain to turn his head towards the voice and the creature to wheeze with laughter this time.  
“Go. I’ll take care of him.” Natasha states as she positions herself behind the monstrosity lying beneath her, checking the bullets in her gun.  
Steve runs towards the barks of the dog as the wind thrashes his brooding beard and rebellious hair, increasing his pace as he hears the voice of a woman again.  
It isn’t long before he comes out of the trees to the sight of a lone house that welcomes him in the clear meadow.  
He sees you stand there, frozen, staring at him with caution. He wants to step forward to warn you when something stops him.  
A dark silhouette behind you.  
Abyss for eyes. Pale, coarse skin. Unlike the one he came across in the forest, this one has long black hair that reaches her waist and a wry smile plays on her face, not showing her teeth yet.  
She is mocking him as she stands behind the woman, taking a whiff of her scent.  
Before he can shout out a warning to you, he sees you step away from his direction and run straight into the monster. Within a flash, the fangs come for your shoulder.  
“No!” Steve’s lungs burst out as he runs towards you.  
He does not see the shots fired at the fanged beast by Sam from above. He never feels the air fill up with a pungent smell of death. All he senses is your scream.  
Just like a natural reflex, his arms come for your body writhing in pain, trying to settle you down.  
“Dr Banner. We have a situation. The female bit a civilian. It is not looking good,” Sam speaks as he stands between Steve trying to break you out from the pain and the corpse of the dead female.  
“Hey, hey, hey,” the pale hands come for your jaw, bringing your head up so your blurry eyes can see his pale blue. “You’ll be fine, okay? Look at me. You’ll be alright. Come on. Stay with me.”  
He places your head over his chest while his arms try to absorb as much of the tremors reverberating from your skin as they can.  
“Banner!” He shouts into his comms, covering your ear with his palms.  
“She’s going into shock. If the poison spreads too far, it will start killing her cells. Steve, you can bring here but I don’t know if she can make the ride home.”  
Steve looks down at you, your eyes glued to his, tears running down your temple as you are trying to hold on to his face for as long as you can underneath the layers of a thousand needles stabbing all your cells one by one.  
“She’ll make it.” Steve declares as he picks your aching body in his arms. Clint and Nat are already bringing down the jet near him.  
“No one’s dying on my watch.”


	2. Chapter 2

The colours are a beautiful blur. The only sound is your slow, open-mouthed breathing. You blink once, twice, to clear your vision and feel a face emerge out of the gaudy daze.  
The familiar soft face.  
Now that everything around you is silent, you can finally concentrate on the features holding you close to them.  
The dense brown of the beard and hair nuzzled by a slow moving wind comes into focus first, followed by the contrast of a pale skin. Blue eyes, no less than an ocean observing a vicious torrent, look down at you while unimaginably perfect red lips part, drawing a tense breath.  
Everything moves at a snail’s pace. The strange man’s brows, his hands going towards the back of your arms- while you lay with your back on the ground- his face coming close to you while you feel your hands grip his shoulders to stop the decreasing distance between the two of you.  
_Wait._

Your hands move at a normal pace. You graze your right one along the stranger’s arm, feeling the leather under your fingers, and muscles probably stronger than your skull under that.  
His hands have already reached your back. The depth of the sea in his eyes is glistening like a miniature thunder trapped inside them. You want to look closer, go down further but something grabs your attention from the corner of your eye.  
Stacie.  
She’s standing beside you, her skin curled up around her teeth while her limbs are retrieving like a spring gathering all the potential energy inside them for a future attack.  
_Stace_ , you think, _what is it?_  
You follow her gaze, your left arm unconsciously latching itself to the stranger’s right shoulder as his hands now have your back floating mid-air.  
A black mass comes into view, floating above the two of you, blocking the thundering clouds in the sky from your view. The blob of mass seems alive, shaping and reshaping its inside into mounds and troughs.  
A forgotten fear takes over your senses, your arms now going around the stranger- trying their best to cover as much of him under your grasp as they can- and like an unspoken invitation, white- nearly glistening silver- fangs come of the black mass, one by one standing out in the manner of an orchestra taking a bow in the form of the most ghostly grin.  
Your breathing falters, your hands digging into the stranger’s skin as a formidable chill runs down your spine. Try as much as you want, your eyes cannot look away from the ghost of a face forming in front of you with beady black eyes peeking out from the river of black muck. And before you know, the grin turns into a stretched out mouth, opening to reveal the multiple fangs lining the inside it, coming at you with incredible speed to devour you whole.  
A scream escapes your lungs, waiting for the horrid inevitable.  
.  
Your scream breaks as your eyes open to white.  
A ceiling. Bulbs. Vents at the corners.  
Everything is white.  
You feel something cold under your sweaty grip, turning away from the view above you only when you’re satisfied at the absence of even any tiny specks of black. Your hands are wrapped around the hospital bed’s support.  
_Hold on a minute. A hospital bed?_  
Your eyes adjust to the minimal furniture and your ears finally register the periodic beeping mapping your heart rate and breathing.  
Grey curtains are drawn up on the windows while the rest of the walls have a white hue with just two pictures- one of a golden retriever captioned ‘you have been visited by the God of infinite happiness’ and another of a kitten saying 'meow if you need cuddles’- hanging on the walls in front of you.  
You look down at yourself to find your clothes gone, replaced by a standard hospital gown that seemed way softer to be something available in a local hospital unless you were in a place you could not afford.  
_Someone…undressed me._  
The thought flushes embarrassment down your whole body.  
You have never been in a situation like this before and the thought of even a doctor or a nurse seeing you naked doesn’t simmer down the unease you are feeling right now. You try to get up, igniting a surging pain in your right shoulder and a tug around your arms.  
The latter is covered in needles connected to the bags of iv fluids hanging on either side.  
“How’s that possible?”  
Your body does a little jump at the unfamiliar voice.  
Opposite you, at the door in the wall near the corner stands a spectacled, curly brunette-haired man, his posture a little bent- out of curiosity towards you or some unseen burden, you could not make out which one it is- and surprised for some reason. He enters the room with a tablet in his hand. From the distance, you can make out charts and numbers moving about on the screen of the device he held in his hand.  
“I- I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he states, “I’m Bruce Banner and…and…”  
He gets lost, his eyes still frozen on you.  
“Not…supposed to…wake up,” he finally confesses.  
His name sounds familiar to you. More familiar than it should be. But you cannot really place it right now.  
“I’m supposed to be dead?” you question the man.  
Bruce stands there for a moment before gathering his thoughts and apologising. “Friday,” he announces to someone, “call Dr Cho here.”  
“Yes, Dr Banner,” a soothing voice echoes through the room, making you look everywhere for the source.  
“Friday’s an AI,” Bruce mentions, reading through your surprise and curiosity.  
“An AI like…Alexa?”  
Bruce chuckles. “Oh, there’s no competition here.”  
A slender woman with delicate features enters the room, showing the same confused bewilderment that Bruce had shown a couple of minutes ago. Without wasting any time, both of them get down to checking your vitals and running some tests, assuring you that they wanted to know you were all right.  
An hour passes before you are given a 'good to go’.  
“You can get out and get some fresh air before we get some results on your tests, Miss…”  
“Y/N. Just Y/N.” You smile at the doctors.  
“Friday will show you to the guestroom, Y/N,” Bruce affirms with a smile before busying himself with Dr Cho into studying all the samples they have collected from you.  
.  
“What am I doing here?”  
“You’ll get your answers in time. For now, I suggest that you relax as much as possible.”  
That was all Bruce had told you.  
And here you were, in a grey-walled corridor, moving with a string of red light pulsating through the walls and pointing you to…well, somewhere.  
_Where the hell am I?_  
You try to remember the last thing you saw. The forest edge. The grey clouds. Stace running in your direction. Someone standing at the forest edge.  
_Who was that man?_  
You try to concentrate on the fog inside your brain, trying to make sense of what had gone down, not noticing the two men standing at the end of the corridor near the turn as a heaviness started swirling everything inside your head for a moment affecting your balance.  
The men standing at the edge of the corridor- opening into a large room complete with all furniture for a living room- do not notice you coming either. They are too focused on their conversation, their arms crossed across their chest, their heads bent in some disturbing thought.  
Another man enters the room from the opposite end, his eyes catching your faltering movement within seconds.  
“Captain, on your six!” He shouts from across the room, making the man close to you turn to take a defensive position but instead finding you swaying like a leaf in winter, about to topple over when his reflexes catch you in time, preventing you from hitting your head in the wall as you are about to go down.  
Your vision clears again and the familiar soft face emerges from the fog.  
You blink once. Twice.  
_This is real._  
Your eyes go wide while your hands catch his arms.  
“Are you all right?” You ask.  
The rest of the men standing in the room tilt their heads in confusion.  
“ _Whaaat_?” The one closer to you mumbles under his breath.  
“Yup. That space vampire messed her up,” the one at the opposite end concludes.  
You hear none of it, concerned for the man pulling you on your feet.  
“I should be the one asking you that,” he says.  
The clear blue eyes make you forget for a moment that it was a dream. Or a nightmare.  
You take a couple of moments to register his face in your memory before turning towards the others.  
“I uhh…Dr Banner told me it was okay to go out.”  
All three pairs of shoulders ease down at once.  
“You should get some rest.”  
You hear it but you don’t listen, your eyes stuck on the glass walls covering one entire side of the huge room, pulling you towards the view outside.  
An infinite landscape around this grey building stands out there with people dressed either in black or in lab coats- some even both- moving about on the ground. There aren’t much of them but they are enough to make you wonder.  
“Where am I? And who are you guys?” You turn around to question the crowd of three.  
All three of the men shift like they have to ready themselves for this question.  
“You’re at the avenger’s facility in The States,” the man at the opposite end responds, “I’m Clint. That’s Sam. And that’s Captain-”  
“I’m Steve Rogers,” your stranger states.  
Silence.  
“We’re-”  
“I know who you are,” you interrupt Sam, “just two questions.”  
Pause.  
“Who undressed me and where are my clothes?”  
.  
“What in the name of hell?!” You whisper to yourself, nearly grunting as you pull your tank top down over your chest, looking at your reflection-lit up by the sunlight pouring in by the glass wall right next to you- in frustration. A bit of ache still lingers around your shoulder, the tiny- but deep- marks of fangs visible over your right side.  
“Miss Y/L/N.” Friday’s voice startles you.  
“Yes…Friday?”  
“Mr Stark would formally like to introduce himself to you. He is waiting in the living room just down the hall.”  
“Okay. I…I’ll go then,” you say into thin air, wondering if that was necessary.  
You find yourself back in the familiar room but this time it’s bustling with people. A redhead has joined them apart from the legendary Tony Stark.  
“Hi. Good evening Mr Stark,” you greet the man whose house you have unintentionally found yourself waking up in.  
“You must be Y/N. You look quite all right for someone bit by an alien parasite.”  
Your soft expressions turn into a furious brow-constricting confusion and gasp.  
“By a what?!”  
“Oh wait, didn’t Banner tell you that?”  
A couple of deep inhales pass among the crowd and Bruce enters the room at the same time. From one look at the tired features around him, he can tell a bomb had exploded in here. Right in your face.  
He gestures you to take a seat as everyone else adjusts themselves around you, trying to make the air as breathable for you as they can. The faces that you can place now from the news, magazine covers, et cetera, are sitting here, trying to understand what had happened to you.  
“The alien that bit you was a female of a parasite species that feeds off the lifetime of the host. But before she could latch on to you, she was taken out by Sam. Nice work, Sam. A second late and you wouldn’t have been here. The females have some sort of a poison in their system that they eject when they want to paralyse the prey before feeding off them. You not only survived that but also are conscious for someone who had nearly sixty-five per cent of their body emerged in that chemical. I was betting on the fact that you would be comatose for at least the next two months. Maybe more. And twenty-four hours later you’re…here.”  
The entire room is listening with rapt attention, turning their heads towards you when Bruce paused to take a sip of his coffee.  
“Your blood work came out fine. The poison was drained out of your system successfully. The plasma count is amazing, by the way, something Clint could really use right now.”  
Clint groaned and Natasha gestured at Bruce, signalling the former that he wasn’t wrong.  
“So we should take her back now then. She clearly doesn’t like it here. Give her a clear already, doc,” Sam affirms, never having answered your previous questions.  
_Go back._  
 _Go back home?_  
Your hand goes to the aching shoulder, trying to suppress the chill travelling down your back at the thought of what you went through there yesterday.  
Everyone seems somewhat satisfied, in your eyes, with Sam’s suggestion. Everyone but one person. Steve stands at the entrance, his side leaning on the wall, near the crowd with Tony next to him.  
He sees your eyes not comforted by the words of going back home, your hands landing at the point of attack within seconds of Sam’s mention of that place.  
“Why don’t we give her some time?”  
All heads turn towards him, measuring his words.  
“I’m sure you have more tests to run Banner. We can never be so sure with aliens, can we?”  
Banner looks at Steve and then back at you. “Yeah, you’re right. I hope it’s okay with you.”  
“Better safe than…dead?” You shrug, trying to hide your uneasiness with a smile.  
.  
Friday leads you to the elevator to take you down to the guestroom. The mirrored walls around you make you uncomfortable, forcing your reflection to bounce off every shiny surface. Just as the doors are about to close, a familiar figure walks in.  
“Hey,” Steve greets you with a smile from under his beard as you make way for him.  
“Hi.” Your smile comes out feeble in contrast to his, making you curse yourself a bit on the inside.  
The doors close, taking you both to your destination, reflecting your contrasting figures in the spotlessly clean surface in front of you.  
Steve towers over you in terms of height- you barely reach his shoulder- even as he stands with his head bowed a little, his hands at ease in front of him.  
“How’re you feeling?” His voice is a soft spray of comfort around you even when it catches your nerves off guard.  
“I’m feeling better than I did this morning. Thank you.”  
He nods his head in satisfaction.  
You feel a rusty fragrance of a forest mixed with a diluted warmth tickle your nose.  
Steve’s scent.  
You take in one lungful of breath to calm your nerves, only inciting them further with his scent around you.  
“I’m sorry,” you finally blurt out, grabbing his attention, “I don’t mean to be a burden, especially at a time like this.”  
You hesitate from meeting his gaze, knowing full well what might happen if you did. You were aware of what had happened during the war in Wakanda, scared to state it directly to the man.  
“You’re not a burden here,” Steve insists without a second thought. “Rather you’re a welcoming site to these people you just met. All of them. Sam too.”  
Your hand goes back to the pulsating wounds around your neck.  
“Yeah, I don’t think I should be,” you mutter to yourself leaning back on the wall.  
“Believe me they-”  
“No,” you cut him short, “I mean I shouldn’t be here. Alive.”  
And you make the mistake.  
Your sullen eyes catching his confused ones, latching on to them for a lingering second.  
“Why would you s-”  
“I have cancer, captain. I’m a few months away from dying as it is.”  
There you see it again; the familiar shock, turning to pain, turning to empathy.  
“I’m sorry.”  
“It’s fine,” you smile back, easily this time from the habitual reflex.  
The doors ding open to your floor.  
Steve steps away, his large pale hands holding the space in front of the now-hidden-from-view doors for you.  
Without another word, he escorts you to your room, matching your pace.  
“Your room, Miss Y/L/N.” Friday greets you at the door.  
You finally turn towards Steve, meeting his eyes again.  
“I do appreciate you saving my life, captain. I really do.”  
A softness seeps over his face as his lips find a smile.  
“Call me Steve,” he says, shifting a bit towards you making you freeze where you stand for a second as he goes past you to the doorknob, opening it for you.  
A bark from inside the room brings down all the tensed wires stressing your skin.  
“Stace!!” You bend down to bring the little corgi in your arms who showers you with licks and cuddles and worry filled whines.  
“Thank you, Steve,” you smile, teary-eyed, at his figure standing by the door.  
“Good night, Y/N.” His smile bids you a sweet farewell for the night, closing the door behind him. The moment it clicks shut, that smile disappears, replaced with a forlorn ache over his face.  
.  
“How long can we keep her here?”  
Bruce beams as he sees Steve walk into his lab.  
“Straight to the point huh? This means you saw what I saw. They like the new face here.”  
Steve says nothing as he comes up to the screens, next to Bruce.  
“Steve,” Bruce’s voice is filled with concern, “how are you doing?”  
Steve cuts a look at Bruce before his gaze goes soft. “I’m not here to talk about it, Bruce.”  
He inhales, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose, tired for the day.  
“I can give her an okay as soon as tomorrow if that’s what you want, captain.” Bruce’s monotonous voice sears through the thin air.  
“She looks at all of us as if this was a mistake,” Steve mutters to himself, “she’s barely got any time to live anyway.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“Cancer. I’m talking about the cancer,” he admits, finally opening his eyes to watch the puzzled scientist staring at him.  
“Y/N has cancer,” he clears as if stating the obvious.  
“No, she doesn’t,” Bruce’s expression doesn’t change a bit.  
“She just now told me herself.”  
Within no time the scientist is on the system walking through your medical history collected by Friday.  
“No,” Bruce shakes his head.  
“What?” Steve is confused at his friend for they can clearly see in the reports displayed in front of them that she had been diagnosed with it a few months ago.  
“No, Steve, look.” Bruce points out to the screen showing your test details from the blood work he had taken up today, right next to the average numbers of a healthy human body. “This is the cell count for a normal human and this is her cell count. They are nearly the same. If she has cancer, the count should way higher than this number and when I say way higher, I mean incredibly high, like this,” he pulled up an image of a blood count from an old test subject, showing the captain the stark difference between the two values.  
Bruce’s bewildered face turns to a speechless Rogers.  
“Even if she had cancer, it seems like she doesn’t anymore.”  
.  
You find yourself going through the corridors in the Avengers facility, looking for something. The grey walls seem a bit darker, opening into the familiar hall covered in darkness from the night outside, the only means of lighting up anything in your path being the moonlight. You turn towards the glass to look outside but your eyes catch a movement from the corners by your wounded shoulder.  
A full-length mirror bordered in silver sits by the wall, smudged in places, reflecting your figure wearing nothing but a simple white dress that reaches your knees.  
You step towards the reflecting surface, your hand reaching out to wipe off some dirt. Within a flash, everything else disappears. The furniture, the glass walls even the entire hall, leaving you alone in front of the mirror in the dark where the only thing visible is you and your reflection lit up by some unknown source of light.  
You turn back from the abyss around you to your reflection, looking into the eyes. An unnamed uneasiness walks through you about your reflection.  
Something doesn’t feel right.  
You edge closer to the surface- your reflection matching your movement-   and bring your palm up, watching the movement of your fingers and their reflection meet on the surface.  
Your eyes go back to the face, catching a smile on your lips.  
Not your lips. Your reflection’s.  
You weren’t smiling. She was.  
Her eyes turn from a clear y/e/c to black, raking over the sclera within a flash.  
“Hi,” she greets you slyly, making you wake up from the nightmare with a jolt.  
You are back in your room.  
Stacie sleeps by your legs.  
The moonlight seeps through the window.  
The clock shows it’s way past midnight.  
Your heavy breaths saturated with fear and the rapid beating of your heart are the only sounds in the air.


	3. Chapter 3

Your room is silent again. The fear laden breaths now calm.

_What the hell was that about?_

The nightmare felt real. Way too real inside your head.

You looked around your room again, moving your fingers over the white sheets covering you, trying to absorb the silent reality through your skin by feeling the soft cotton under your tips before the surface changed to a coarser material.

Your jeans.

 

Even though the Avengers facility’s staff had provided you with all the amenities within your room, somehow a change of clothes for the night had slipped their mind.

 _Not their fault, really_ , you think to yourself, _I wasn’t even supposed to wake up for two months. Missed some quality sleep right there._

Well, at least your brain was the usual weird self.

Taking a relieved sigh your hands involuntarily move to your throat pulsating with thirst. You turn towards the side of the bed to look at the empty glass bottle resting there.

_Right, I’d filled up Stacie’s bowl._

Despite the gruff feeling inside your throat, your body sits still under the sheets only to finally throw your head back into the pillow as you rub your tired eyes and groan.

“Fuck,” you erupt into the air around you before getting up, sliding your jeans over your dry legs and picking up the bottle. Stacie sleeps by the edge of the bed, clearly tired from showering you with all the love in one night as she does not even budge when you get up from the bed and move away.

With one final deep inhale, you twist the door handle and step out into the corridor.

Soft lights overhead mark the path for you- as if someone had dimmed the brightness for the night, which amazed you even though you knew whose home this was- making it watch your step. As much as you wante to call out to Friday to know where the kitchen- or the nearest place to get drinkable water in this fabulously furnished labyrinth- was, you are scared of disturbing someone who might have been up at this hour.

Registering the weight of your phone in your jeans, you pull it out to look at the time. Nearly twenty minutes to two in the morning.

The entrance to the corridor where the elevator stands comes into your view, making you take long strides in its direction and open it with urgency.

The reflective insides of the mobile space greet you after a ding, making a cold wave rush through your entire body as you are reminded of the recent nightmare. Immediately your eyes revert away from your reflection, taking a one-eighty turn as soon as you step into the elevator.

 _Forests and open space_ , you repeat to yourself.

_Forests and open space._

The elevator buttons have different letters for different floors except for the first floor, which you are sure led to anywhere but the kitchen. Picking the first thing that clicks in your mind, you press TF.

_Why? Why would you choose that?_

A tiny voice calls inside your head.

_I don’t know, woman! My stomach read it and all I could see was The Food. The Food!_

Sigh.

_You really should’ve just slept._

 

The elevator opens to a similar large hallway that goes down into a corridor. You step out cautiously but not before there’s a tinkle of a tiny bell that makes your heart jump.

It takes you a moment to realise the sound is from the bracelet half-hanging from your pocket out of which you pulled your phone just moments ago.

 _Don’t lose that, Y/N,_ you scold yourself, as you remember safely tucking it in your pocket before you’d decided to plant the cherry blossom in your backyard. Carefully stretching the intricate red threadwork, you slide the bracelet over your fingers and around your left wrist. The little silver bell chimes again. Feeling the sound won’t be much to wake someone up from their sleep, you walk down the corridor to find what you came for.

This labyrinth turns into a hallway of blue walls with glass standing on one side at certain intervals that emanate nothing but darkness from the other side unless you stop and look closely enough to make out shapes of different pieces of equipment kept in there that the soft glow of the light above you tries its best to outline- without turning off any alarms inside your head- for your tired eyes.

_Thump._

A sound comes from somewhere in front of you making you stop and evaluate your senses.

Silence.

A tired and frustrated exhale leaves your lungs.

_Thump, thump._

You freeze again.

The repeated thumping slowly takes you down a turn like a piper, making you forget the looming darkness overhead as the periodic lights that once lit your way now lie dead in this hallway.

The walls are blue here too; relatively a tone darker and cold to the touch of your fingers lightly grazing over them. The thumping grows heavier as you see an opening come close to you, lit up by a fluorescent white light on the inside.

Coming to a halt by the doorway, you peek inside to find it opening to a room- larger than the area your house covered- filled with workout equipment and practice rings with safety mattresses laid out in places. The walls are covered with every type of gear one at the Avengers facility can come up with. But none of this is what catches your eyes.

A low grunt escapes the man who tortures the punching bag with his fists repeatedly, his black tee drenched in sweat from the back while his dark hair glistens in its presence under the harsh light.

The source of that unsettling thumping you’ve been hearing.

Your brain makes a subconscious decision of holding your breath as you see every muscle on his back under the black cloth outlined perfectly- while the exposed pale skin glistens, wet from the sweat from the heat the punches have been building up inside- flexing at the movement of the bulky arms ready to rip the fabric at any moment while his legs try to keep him in place with a stance that does not help the guilt rising in your stomach as you admire the perfectly shaped rear from where you stand.

 _Mother of all shapes_ , you hear your mind speak.

As if your thoughts had spiked the air around you, the punches on the bag stop with the last one ripping the leather apart, allowing the sand to scatter on the ground, bringing you out of a dizzy trance and making you cross the distance to the other side of the doorway before you are noticed by the man.

You stand there, breathing as slowly as possible, waiting for any sounds from inside the room that may be a warning of having known your presence.

_Did he see me?_

A clank and a thump followed by another clank answers your question with a negative.

You breathe out with relief and walk down a few steps towards the end of the hallway marked by a window that is letting the moonlight in with all its lustre, to take a turn only to find yourself at a dead end.

_No kitchen?_

Even though it was obvious a few steps back, your shoulders still slump in defeat at not finding what you were looking for in a training area and your body turns around to go back and start the search all over again only to slam into a hard wall. Or someone that feels like one.

Dark blue eyes penetrate your skin with the iciest glare, making every tiny hair on your body stand up with fear that gushes through every strand of your nerves. The glass bottle slips from your cold sweaty fingers but is caught by a pale hand before it can even reach halfway to the floor. You back away from the figure only to run into the window behind you, forcing your insides to scream, the first reflexes of your body as it drowns in the sensation of fear. The brooding face comes a little closer, poetically lit partially with the moonlight- just showing the eyes while everything else is shrouded by the darkness surrounding both of you. The eyes of a beast, with a hint of a familiarity within them.

And that’s when you soak in the presence of Steve Rogers towering over you, nothing like the man you saw a few hours ago as the beastly glower in his eyes sends all the worst signals inside your mind.

This was not the man you met earlier. This was someone else. _This_ was something else.

The familiar scent drenched with the odour of sweat flares up your nostrils, making you weak in the knees, not in a good way whatsoever.

You try to gulp down the uneasiness in your throat only to be reminded by the pain of why you were seeing this in the first place.

“I,” you hear your voice tremble under his dead stare, “I was looking for…” Your voice trails away into oblivion as you weakly point at the bottle that now looks so small in his huge hands.

He doesn’t move.

Tiny beads of sweat line up his brows, his forehead, his cheeks, and a liquid line smoothly glides down from the side to his jaw, moving further down his neck till it mingles with the black fabric that has been seeing it for some time now. Even in this gut-wrenchingly crude aura that surrounds him, he seems no less than a God; a God who was disturbed at his most vulnerable.

What disturbs you more is the languid rise and fall of his chest at this moment when you just saw the strength that ripped apart a body that definitely weighed more than you.

_Is he even human?_

You finally see a movement in his eyes.

He looks away from your shaking gaze to something a bit more lower from his field of view, lower than your face even.

A sudden cold sensation over your exposed skin makes you flinch and back into the window with a loud thud, making you close up like a sensitive bud before you realise what just happened. The bell on your bracelet chimes mid-turmoil- a warning for ships heading for the rocky shores during the stormy night.

Steve’s icy fingers come for your shoulder again- only this time you’re ready- roaming smoothly over the marks running on the entire right side, covering the space above your collarbone. Sparks run through the wounds on his touch down your body, your exhaled breath shattering in that second. As if that wasn’t enough to break the strings of strengths holding you on your legs, his exhaled warmth breath smashes over your neck and jaw, the close proximity building up the time-and-again forgotten ache inside your throat.

“Does it hurt?”

If that bottle was still in your hands right now you could swear on ever tightened muscle inside your body that it would’ve cracked and pierced right through your skin the moment those raspy words left his mouth and teased every one of your senses.

Your eyes close themselves; shutting out your surroundings being their best bet to survive the daze setting inside your brain.

His fingers still feel the tiny red troughs over your uneven surface as if they are trying to memorize every little indentation, every last mark, every inch of skin that was ripped apart.

“Only when I’ve forgotten about it,” you hear yourself say.

You open your eyes to face him. The beast still lurks behind the sapphire blue that glints under the moonlight as it meets you, waiting for some undisclosed moment to come out- neither sooner, nor later.

But for now, it goes away, melting into the warm ocean that is somewhat recognisable.

* * *

“Just let Friday guide you if you need anything next time.”

Steve leads you back from the floor solely dedicated to a kitchen, dining room and an evening lounge- something you deem as a waste of space for people you’d dined with, in the living room while sitting on couches, watching The Addams Family as they gorged on takeouts from their favourite places.

“I’ll remember that next time,” you agree, holding the now filled bottle close to your chest, watching the broad shoulders in front of you and thinking how many soldiers must’ve followed him into battle with this view of the captain walking with a strong resolve, his gait so effortless and easy to be mesmerised by as he leads you to his room.

_Wait.  
What?_

You see him open his door, knowing full well yours is just down the hall, the very last one, in fact.

_No, he’s just going to his room. He’s not taking you in there, woman!_

“Goodnight, sir-captain, I mean!” You babble before quickly turning away, your heart coming up in your mouth as you felt your cheeks heat up.

“Wait,” he calls out, instantly making you stop and turn back while your free hand goes up to scratch some unseen itch on the back of your neck.

You watch him go across the room and open his closet. As he is taking out something, a shirt falls down on the floor, which he ignores as he comes back to you.

“Here,” Steve hands you a pair of his sweatpants and a sweatshirt, “we only brought your dog in a hurry. We can go back in the morning-”

“Yeah, I’ll go with you,” you announce, nodding your head in agreement. “Thank you-”

“Please, like I said, call me Steve.”

The warmth in his voice melts your tensed up heart rate.

“Thank you, Steve.”

“You’re welcome, Y/N.”

You carefully hold his clothes in your hand as you start to walk away before turning back to him but he’s already gone inside, walked across the room again to pick up the shirt that had fallen down as he aimlessly throws it on the grey loveseat by the window before reaching for the one he wore from over his head, pulling it over his back in one effortless move, exposing his worked up muscles to your curious eyes.

You can see the faint marks on his upper back, almost like nails digging into his skin and the thought sends the most frantic shivers through your core as you trespass into sacred grounds and step inside the prohibited waters when you imagine yourself being the one to leave them.

And just as you do, another image hits you, making your eyes go wide in horror, your hands go cold while your legs rush to the safety of your temporary abode.

You close the door behind you before allowing your mind to unleash the forgotten horror.

You did hold Steve like this before.

You did dig your nails in him at the very places where the marks still show. You did hold him within inches of you, grabbing him with everything you had.

All of this, you did in your nightmare this morning when you saw the black blob with fangs come for you.

Your nightmare, it seems now, was more than just a hallucination.


	4. Chapter 4

_If there really is a place called heaven on the passing of life after death, it either has to be this place or replication of this to the very last molecule._  
The warm water of the levelled-up pond helps you in achieving relaxation of all the physical ache inside your body while the recurrent appeasing clonk of the sōzu behind you, by the side of the outlet for the hot spring that is bringing down the water that you are calmly settled in, aids in soothing the mental turmoil you have been feeling all this time.  
The pleasant warmth over your bare skin plunged inside the water is ringing a soothing tone of its own. The colourful birds perched atop the sakura trees are singing a beautiful melody as the prime golden rays of the morning sun are fighting with the leaves to touch your face, tease your eyes, tickle your shoulders with their illuminated soft heat.  
 _Nature sure is beautiful and mysterious_ , you think, closing your eyes to breathe in the serenity that surrounds you.  
“It is, isn’t it?”

With one-tenth of the time they took to close, your eyes open wide and turn towards the voice to witness a familiar face opposite you sitting inside the water, his ripped arms open, resting over the pond’s cemented platform.  
The flight response makes you let out a broken scream from your lungs on seeing Clint’s gloriously bare figure in front of you before your body ducks itself inside the water, which seems far too clearer even with the ripples now.  
“Oh, Jesus!” he calls out as he slowly straightens himself, the soft smile that is slowly creeping you out, never leaving his face, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”  
“What the f-”  
“Fine day for a dip in the hot spring ain’t it?”  
Your thumping heart hasn’t even recovered from Barton’s uncalled company when Sam Wilson’s presence to your far left- in the same posture as his soft blonde colleague had just a few seconds ago- drives you away from his voice, slipping head down into the water, disturbing the meditative quiet all around you.  
 _It’s a dream. It’s an illusion. There is no other explanation._  
Your thoughts scream as the water around you swirls and whispers the liquid commotion inside your ear because it seems too much for a moment to open your eyes and face the truth.  
Stabilising yourself where you sit, the warm ripples teasing your already flushed skin when you come back up, your hair all wet and snaked up around your face, you finally open your eyes after a good few moments of riveting silence filled with your shocked heartbeat inside your ears.  
The soothing heavenly setting brings back the bird songs and the warm sun peeking at you.  
Just you.  
No one in front of you. Or to your left or right.  
You slowly reverse your way back to the edge of the pond behind you, never blinking for the fear of embodying the war heroes with flawless skin you just witnessed come and go out of the blue.  
 _I mean if it really had to be someone…_  
The sōzu still goes about its usual melody, the periodic clonk on the rock hitting your nerves in the right way as your body eases as it feels itself nearly reaching the bank.  
“You seem a little stressed,” a voice way too familiar to the inner workings of your brain to get all the right juices flowing, making your insides flutter, calls out from behind you.  
You turn your head- and this time, somewhere in the back of your mind, a part of you does it not out of fear but this buzz that feels like a positive rush- and find yourself staring at the wet brown beard reflecting like golden strings when the sun hits them.  
“Steve,” you hear yourself call out in a soft whisper as you gaze far too long at the red lips that feel too inviting over the pale face covered in water droplets that make him look too perfect to be real.  
“So…is this how you prefer it?”  
You feel his bare muscles flex as his hand comes out of the water to touch the snake strands of your hair and drive them away from your face, his minimal touch of the fingers along your cheeks sending a spiral of illuminated strings twirling right through you down to your core.  
As if that wasn’t enough, the fingers do not leave your face, his blue eyes- like the deeper darker undiscovered space they are- following their movement down your jaw to your chin to stop there before feeling your pulsating lower lip under his thumb.  
“Is this-” his breath marking the already trembling lips of yours, bringing them closer to his- “how you like it?”  
Your brain does not even give you time to register his question as the warm wetness of his wine lips melts on to yours.  
The strength it has taken to keep yourself from freezing your heart there and then, unravels itself from inside you and travels to your limbs to keep themselves from shuddering when Steve’s hands gently snake their way from your hips to your back under the water- that feels much warmer now- while his other one takes you by the jaw, latching on to your lips as if he was drowning and you were his last breath.  
Your limp, bare arms rub against his cold, hard ones and you feel your body automatically leaning into his touch, your blazing fingers landing on his chest before giving up on fighting the urge to move to his back and pulling him closer.  
His tongue on your lips sends a vibration that seeps down into your mouth to turn it into a delicious moan, forcing you to part your lips and let him through.  
You feel his tongue take a taste of yours before a low grunt escapes his throat.  
“How are you so delicious?”  
You don’t want to, but something about his words makes you open your eyes to watch his face experience complete ecstasy- as if for the very first time- his eyes closed, head thrown back a little in an act of prayer. And when it turns back down the eyelids flutter a little before opening and welcoming you to nothing but entire blackness under them as if he was possessed by a demon.

* * *

You wake up with a jolt.  
Your body lays there in the bed, on its stomach, not even bothering to do something about the screaming heartbeat as you stare into oblivion for that one long, horrid moment as everything that you just dreamt of flashes through your brain again.  
“What. The fuck. Is wrong. With me.”  
A low growl from Stacie comes out.  
“Not cancer apparently.”  
You flip on to your side on Clint Barton’s voice, not realising where the bed ended and a clumsy fall to the floor began, letting out a squeal before a loud thud and a devastated groan.  
A quiet, awkward moment passes as you do not move from where you so elegantly just planted yourself. “Yeah, I just came to tell you to come over for breakfast. Banner has some news for you.”  
Unless it was a way to bleach out specific memories from your mind, you were really not in the mood today.

* * *

“Okay.”  
Silence.  
“That’s it?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Are you sure?”  
“Yup. That was the only reaction she gave when Banner told her she didn’t have cancer.”  
Sam turns to look towards your figure sitting in the back of the Quinjet, your hands holding on to the straps that keep you in place in your seat halfheartedly while you stare into some unknown void, the tired eyes surrounded by dark circles washing the soldier with a wave of empathy wrapped in confusion.  
Steve works with the location of your place, scanning for any unusual activity in the forest that surrounds your home on his tablet while stealing glimpses in your direction, pausing to look at you whenever you absentmindedly scrunch your nose as your hand goes to your shoulder; sometimes his gaze even lingering for a movement as the sun peeks inside from the window to graze your skin and light up your hollow eyes, making the rogue soldier question what could possibly be troubling you after knowing that you might have just been gifted with a second life.  
Clint turns the jet on autopilot and turns to get up and look in your direction.  
“She’s been giving me really weird looks since morning,” Clint states as he unloads his ammunition from the makeshift armoury.  
“Me too. I swear to God it was like she was scared of me or something. I’ve barely spoken to her since yesterday.”  
“Me too. I didn’t even order Thai for dinner because-”  
“Because of the allergies,” Sam completed while nodding in agreement.  
Both of them steal unsuspecting glances in your direction, trying to act as if they were having a really serious discussion.  
“She was on edge last night,” Steve mentions, still mapping the area on the tablet when two pairs of eyes turn towards him with nothing but suspicion filled inside them to the brim, “when I found her lost on the training floor.”  
“You,” Sam started with a whisper, paused for a moment, before tilting his head a little, “found her on the training floor?”  
Steve looks up, his brows arching up in the most casual manner as he nodded.  
“What were you doing in there last night?”  
“I was training.”  
“Mhmm. And how could you tell she was on edge?”  
“Because she jumped when she saw me and again when I grabbed h-”  
Like synchronised dolphins, Clint and Sam’s heads feel a push back as they cock their brow at the soldier while Steve reads the question in their eyes.  
His blank expression doesn’t change as he continues to reason with them.  
“-her with her guard dow-”  
“You grabbed her.”  
“That’s not-”  
“For all we know, she is traumatised right now.”  
“No, that’s not- I walked her back to the rooms and she was f-”  
“Wait, a second,” Clint snaps out of a trance, “that’s what Nat meant!”  
“What?” Sam looks at his friend to be more translative for the ones who don’t speak arachnid.  
“Y/N’s wearing Steve’s clothes. Look.”  
Suddenly your body feels a cold shiver run through you and like an instant reflex, you turn towards the three Avengers huddled together looking at you without any filter and all the while your fingers dig into the straps holding you in your seat.  
Clint waves at you and the smile on his face brings back the memory of the bizarre dream, forcing you to close your eyes and hold on to something tighter to curb growing nausea and the height catalysing the build up.  
“Rude,” Clint sings, feeling like your hands would rip off the handles on your side any moment because of the amount of virtue you are holding them with.  
“I have to say they seem to fit her quite well,” Sam chides before turning back to your shelled figure, his brows constricting as his eyes land on something out of the ordinary.  
“Yeah,” Clint agrees, nodding his head, “even the sweatpants. How can someone fit in your sweatpants, Captain?”  
Steve does nothing but inhales at the conversation unfolding around him while he readies himself for the landing.  
“Hey, Cap,” Sam whispers, his eyes not leaving you, “don’t get me wrong but when you said you grabbed her, did you grab the back of her neck so hard that it would almost leave a deep bruise?”  
“For the last time, I did not grab her, I just caught her off-guard.”  
Steve turns back to Sam ready to question him if that’s what he thought of him after all their time together but is stopped as Sam points towards you. “I believe you. But that wasn’t there when we saw her last night.”  
Steve looks in the direction Sam’s pointing in, his eyes finally submitting the purple and green bruise in the shape of two claw marks right below your ear that had been missed this morning when you were not wearing your hair in a ponytail.  
“It wasn’t there when I last saw her either,” he finally manages to say, his eyes never leaving that disturbing mark.  
“What could possibly do that?”  
“ _Who_ could possibly do that?”  
__________  
“Did you see what I saw today?” Tony brings up one of the two glasses of orange juice towards Natasha, getting a coy smile from the Black Widow in return as she turns back to rest her arms on the railings and take in the view of the facility’s open grounds.  
“Oh, I definitely saw more than what you saw.” Natasha clinked her glass with Tony’s and took one good gulp to wash her throat.  
“If you’re talking about the security feed from last night, Romanoff, you’re clearly forgetting who designed the system of this facility.”  
“You’re never going to let me win, are you Stark?” Natasha scoffed.  
Tony shook his head with a smug look on his face as he gulped down his glass.  
“This is the first we’ve seen him be invested in someone other than Bucky since…”  
“Yeah.”  
A soft breeze passes through the grounds carrying the wet odour of the lake near them, the aroma of the wildflowers hanging heavy in the air.  
“He’s been keeping tabs on her ever since she arrived here,” Natasha finally adds.  
“Explains the casual glances he keeps throwing in her direction. I mean,” Tony adds, tilting his glass now and then on the railing, “I thought it was a purely human concern until I saw last night’s feed. That was-”  
“Hot.”  
“I was going to say quite out of character for the Captain but maybe not for Steve but I feel like you get me.”  
Natasha nods and smiles.  
“I really hope one of them makes a move because both seem like dull idiots when it comes to talking about how they’re feeling and are really not good at hiding it either,” she confirms and gets another clink on her glass.  
__________  
“Of course I don’t have decent clothes. I was dying two days ago. Fuck!”  
You look at the pile of clothes scattered over your bed, trying to justify taking as much of your favourite tattered tees that have seen you through your best and worst. This morning, Banner had been quite sure of the fact that he and Dr Cho were not sure how long would your tests take. Even Tony was insistent on keeping you at his facility for it being safer than the forest you are living in but something about the way he moved around you in the when you were having your breakfast made you wonder if this is the only reason for you to go there.  
Just a few moments later you hear a slight knock on your door and see Steve standing there, his hands resting in his jeans as he waits for your signal.  
“Hey, ca-Steve. Come on in.”  
“Sam’s patrolled the area. Everything seems all right. Is there anything we can help you with.”  
You look around and wonder if there was something you could busy the men with when you saw Sam outside the French doors of your room, checking out your tool kit.  
“There is one thing,” you answer Steve’s question before getting up to slide open the door, bringing Sam’s attention towards you, his hands never leaving the dense steel inside his hands.  
“I don’t know how long I’ll be gone and that cherry blossom needs to be planted before summer,” you assert to your audience, who watch the tiny sapling sitting on the ground, the leaves starting to dry a little on their edges.  
“You want us to take it back to the facility?” Sam asks you.  
You shrug a little, about to ask them if it was okay.  
“Say no more,” Clint announces as he picks up your gardening gloves and puts them on, “We could really use some pink back home.”  
Sam and Clint busy themselves, forcing you and Steve to get back inside but not before you thank them enough.  
A silent moment passes between the two of you now that you stand alone inside your most private space. The natural light outside lights up Steve’s features softly, teasing the colour in his eyes and the hues in his beard with the most gentle strokes. You take the moment when asking him to sit down in the loveseat to breathe in the softness- something completely different to what you’d seen last night- before going back to pack your stuff.  
“Is everything alright, Y/N?” Steve finally speaks.

You look at him for one prolonged moment, not sure how to proceed with that question.

_Alright? Hmm. Let’s see. I got bit by an alien. I saw you nearly get eaten by some monstrosity, saw my own reflection turn into a monstrosity. Don’t really know if that was a dream or some fucked up reality. And if that wasn’t enough, I almost saw those two guys outside and you naked. AND I KISSED YOU! SO I AM NOT EVEN NEAR ALL RIGHT!!_  
“Yeah. Everything’s all right. Why do you ask?”  
“You didn’t really give a reaction when Banner gave you the news about your body showing no signs of cancer.”  
Sam and Clint’s muffled voices from outside your door ring inside the room as you look at Steve’s figure sitting opposite you, his arms resting over his knees as he leans towards you with nothing but the pure concern in his eyes.  
A passing thought that has been running inside his mind becomes a suspicion as he sees you avert your gaze while your fingers play with the loose threads of your torn black tee.  
“Y/N…” your name in his husky whisper sends another shiver after his question.  
“My sister and her husband-” your fingers don’t leave the threads- “were my only family. Stace was their child. I lost both of them in the…uh… Infinity War. That’s what the news is calling it, right?”  
The tee changes a shade near your fingers as the wetness seeps through the cotton threads.  
It takes your hazy senses some time to register the warmth emanating beside you as the bed dips a little and the soft heat of a hand engulfs yours, the fingers folding around your palms.  
“I’m sorry.”  
“Me too.”  
The warmth fills up the silence in the room; the glow from Steve’s palms entering yours to lull all those stretched chords inside your chest after what seems like a painful eternity.  
“Steve,” you finally breathe his name, your comforted heart now beating fast again, “something has been…happening ever since I woke up yesterday.”  
Steve shifts a little where he sits to face you, making the beating heart pick up a little more speed as his curious face invites you for a full view while his hand is still holding yours. You take in one deep breath to keep your mind clear. And sane.  
“I have been having weird…really weird dreams. More like nightmares. And…um…I usually don’t experience such…things. I-I might be experiencing some sort of post-trauma stress? I’m not sure.”  
Your voice wavers at the end, not knowing how to tell what you were being tortured with without spilling the details- those dark eyes terrorising you, sometimes with a blob of black hanging mid-air, other times as you, and then today as Steve.  
“Tony has a counsellor and therapist in the facility. If you’d like…” Steve watches your free hand carefully rubbing away your tears, facing away from him before turning back with a smile.  
“Yes, I would. Thank you, Steve.”  
  
“That’s…Stacie’s snack bar,“ you state to Clint- who immediately leaves the dog food and folds his arms to plant himself casually in your kitchen, clearly not happy- before opening your kitchen cabinet that stocks all your snacks and watch his gloomy grunt turn into starry eyes within seconds.  
Leaving the men with cold beer bottles and chips, you bring out your two bags from the room and place it near the door- to the porch at the back that gives quite a view of the Quinjet in your backyard- before turning to the table that houses all your keys and important documents.  
Where he stands, Clint can see your reflection in the mirror in front of you as you collect a few letters and some keys and start putting them in your purse.  
“Mmm! This beer tastes good! Why don’t they have this in The States?” Sam announces, making him and Steve read the information on the label.  
“It’s a local brand,” you mumble from where you stand, “If you want you can take some…or all back home. I’ve got three crates in the storage room. Down the corridor, second door.”  
Without another word, Sam gets up and goes to help himself while Steve picks up your bags and walks out to the ride home.  
Clint enjoys his beer and chips for as long as he can, that is, till you would chuck them out of your place.  
Suddenly a change in your expression in the mirror makes him stop doing everything.  
One of the keychains with a rogue metal shaving pierces through the skin around your fingers, forcing a little hiss and some blood out of you.  
Clint is about to get up and help you when your reflection stops him midway as your eyes suddenly turn pure black, making the archer grip on to his weapon sitting next to him on the table without his eyes leaving what he saw.  
And as you blink, the black void clears away from your sclera, leaving nothing but y/e/c orbs reflecting the sun outside while you stand there in a daze, looking at your untainted skin.

“What was I grabbing here-oh right! The keys!” Clint hears you say to yourself before you pack your purse and come back to him with a smile.  
“Want me to pack some of these for you for the way back?” You ask the archer, who- you are now convinced- just looks like that even when he’s not in your dreams.  
“Oh, I got it. I’ll just-” his hands pick up the packets of chips while his eyes are still glued to yours- “take these. Let’s go, shall we?”  
You nod and lock behind Sam and Clint, the latter still doesn’t leave your side.  
“I feel like I just hit a jackpot at a guessing game,” Sam cajoles as he takes away three boxes of beer stacked one above another, towards the Quinjet.  
“Yeah,” Clint murmurs, his gaze boring through the back of your head.  
“I feel like I hit a jackpot too.”


	5. Chapter 5

The complacent silence of Avengers facility is a treasure not found usually. The staff is out of one’s way, the researchers are off somewhere creating or finding something for Stark or Banner and the grounds only reverberate with the sound of the breeze fluttering between the trees or the ripples of water in the lake. The birds are warbling lazy tunes, not sure to a novice listener if it’s a mating call or just a song they got stuck in their tiny colourful feathered heads.

Natasha is reading a book on the Sumerians and their discoveries of technological advancement in the universe. For someone reading something so heavy and unnerving, Natasha’s features never give away any hint of revelation or diversion. They remain stoic, too delved into the book at hand that it takes a direct audio connection from the Quinjet for Friday to get the Black Widow to turn her attention towards her.

“Miss Romanoff.”

“Not now, Friday.”

A cackle of familiar voices breathing heavy makes the assassin’s green eyes turn away from the pages and onto the screen projected in front of her by Friday.

“Nat!” Sam’s disrupted voice shouts through the speakers, “ready the Vault. Now!”

Without asking any questions, Natasha gets up and runs out of the lounge to the elevator. “Friday,” she commands, “clear the Helipad to Lab 12, vent out that space and put the Level 7 security protocols for that place.”

“I have already initiated the process, Miss Romanoff,” Friday’s soft voice states, “should I inform Dr Banner to meet you here?”

The elevator doors open to a hallway that leads to the lab that is being reorganised and lit up by the AI to be put to use.

“Yes, please.”

Natasha’s graceful yet urgent footsteps are suddenly matched by another figure that enters the lab from the opposite end.

“What’s going on?” Tony is still in his workout suit, his sleep-deprived eyes now open wide as he turns over some switches and makes the opaque glass wall in front of them turn transparent to give the audience a  full view of the Twenty feet high roof giving way to the Quinjet landing down on the launchpad on the same distance in front of them.

Both Natasha and Tony watch in horror as the Quinjet opens up.

“Holy shi-”

“What the hell?”

Is the only thing they can come up with as their eyes register the site in front of them.

**Thirty-seven minutes earlier**

The Quinjet is soaring above the ground, over the white clouds and clear skies.

Clint feeds in the destination before getting up from the seat and snacking on the stuff he’d brought over from your place.

Sam is showing you how to open the metal caps on the beer bottles with just your hands while Steve is finishing his update to Stark.

“So, she _is_ coming here? On her own free will? Or did you guys lure her into coming back?”

“I can’t leave in the midst of ongoing research, Mr Stark,” you announce in Tony’s direction, still trying to figure out how Sam was making it look too effortless, “Wouldn’t want to disappoint Dr Banner and Dr Cho. I am the test subject after all.”

“Hmm,” Tony sighed, “is that the only reason?”

The jerk your heart feels at Tony’s words makes your hand slip over the metal, causing you to let out an inaudible curse.

“Yeah, I can’t open it,” you mutter with a break in your voice as you hand the bottle back to Sam, “I don’t know how you guys do it.”

“Oh, we just say what we feel like, sweety,”  Stark responds quite smoothly. Way too smoothly for your wreck of nerves.

Steve points out to Tony that you were talking to Sam, only making the latter huff and suppress a laugh before muttering “Well, you are oblivious as ever,” which you are quite sure everyone heard but no one even registered.

_Does Stark know?_

Your internal workings gasp at the thought of world’s strongest Avenger knowing you had a crush on his friend.

_How could he possibly…? Can he hear my thoughts? No! Then he would’ve definitely gagged from the stuff from my nightmares._

You watch Steve shut down the communication with Stark and breathe a sigh of relief before moving to the back to put your jacket inside your bag and calm down your accelerated heartbeat.

Clint watches you go to your bags, his eyes still on your back when he reaches for a switch panel by his side and flicks one.

“Remember our mission in Barcelona? When we were bringing down the entire operation of human traffickers and drug cartels? I’m suddenly feeling the nostalgia of our worst day of that mission.”

Sam and Steve turned towards Clint, who is smiling with a hint of reminiscence on his lips.

“You mean the time when we had an unintentional mole in the form of that local guy?”

“Yes,” he finally turns towards his teammates with a glint in his eyes that does not go unnoticed, “that is exactly what I’m talking about.”

Steve’s brows constrict in a cold thought as he evaluates Clint’s words.

“Well,” he mentions calculatingly, “I’m glad we were on the same page back then, captain.”

Sam’s expressions feel a jerk, from confusion to a revelation as he turns to look at Steve, whose face suddenly has a calming wave washed over him.

“We are still on the same page, Barton. All you have to do is say the word,” the captain insists.

“Good. Because nothing beats the bad seeds out of the good ones like a strong gust of wind.”

A breath of silence passes between them before Steve nods and turns to walk away from the men.

You are finally done stuffing your jacket inside the already heavy bag, allowing yourself to take in one good breath and almost collapsing next to the wall.

_Only if my messed up backpacking skills could be cured too._

You give one griping look at your stuff before your fingers move into your mess of hair to tie them up as you turn around.

“Hey.”

Steve’s towering figure standing right in front of you sends you off balance a little and like a graceful ballet queen that you are in times of startling visits by your crush, you grab his shoulder and regret it immediately; quickly placing yourself upright and creating a virtual cocoon around you.

“Hey,” you respond in your shrill, squeaky voice, regretting that too.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” The blue in Steve’s eyes seemed deeper than it did a few hours ago. And the lips. _Bless my soul_ , escapes your mind as those too-real-to-be-true parted lips stand in such close proximity to you that you can feel your entire face heat up as your brain can only instruct you to nod.

As both of you move to the end of the helicarrier, you can feel his familiar scent in the air, more than usual; as dense as it was last night. A part of you is glad about getting lost last night. The bare touch of his fingers on your skin is still working inside your mind, rousing up the heat in your ears.

“I realised I never apologised for last night. I never meant to scare you,” Steve’s husky, honey-laden voice is making it worse to concentrate on his words.

 _No. No no no no no_ , your insides whimper before questioning how on earth could you be so thirsty for a guy in the middle of a life crisis so “Oh!” is all you can muster.

“I am really sorry for behaving so rudely,” his voice is nearly a whisper as steps a little closer.

_Focus!_

“I-It’s okay, Steve,” you fumble while your hand goes behind you on the jet’s main hatch to help you in standing straight, “I’m sorry too. I clearly didn’t ask for help when I should have and disturbed your…workout in the process, I guess.”

Steve doesn’t budge from where he stands. Towering over your figure, his eyes fixated on you, sending you in a swirl of such delicious confusion; your brain not being able to decide what to do next.

“And I’m sorry for…,” his beard almost, _almost_ scratching your forehead.

“For what,” you can barely hear your own voice as you look up into his ocean eyes.

“For this,” he whispers before his one arm goes up to hook itself into the metal and the look of concern turns into a stone-cold death stare.

“NOW!” is all you hear from him before hearing Sam press the hydraulics and the sudden change in pressure behind you, sucking you out from the Quinjet and into the vastness of the sky with a deafening scream.

All the alarms in your body go off as you feel yourself spiralling, losing control of yourself, not knowing what to do, your brain immediately shutting down as you go into shock but not before you see your vision being engulfed by burgeoning darkness before every light goes out.

“Clint,” Steve’s voice rumbles throughout the carrier, “you better be goddamn sure about this.” his hand has already bent the metal bar in his grip.

“If nothing happens in the next five seconds,” Steve lets go of the bar as his head turns just a little in the direction of the archer, “I’m going after her.”

His words heard like a satellite call from the sky below them as gooey, black muck-like tentacles appear from somewhere below the open Quinjet frame, making the captain retrieve back a little.

The tentacles grow larger, spreading across the entrance as your seemingly unconscious figure floating in the gooey sea comes up, being gently set upright on the platform before the first Avenger while the birds position themselves in offense at the back.

Your figure, floating in the strings of the glossy blackness, nearly seems like a statue- quite a beautiful one at that; an angel according to the first thought that crosses Steve- the dark strings spread wide behind you as if they were protecting you and not the other way round.

Just as your feet touch the ground, your eyelids fly open, and the armed audience in front of you sees pitch blackness where your eyes are supposed to be.

“Jesus!” Sam exclaims in pure horror, his hands hovering over his gun in his holster, “you were right!”

“Hi boys!” A familiar yet terrifying coarseness of a voice bounces through the Quinjet and all three pairs of eyes watch at your transformation in guarded dread, a thin smile playing over your lips.

“You really should not have thrown me away like trash,” you announced with an eerie melody.

“Do not use weapons,” Steve shouted to the men at the back, making Sam and Clint pause their gun and arrows mid launch, “Y/N is still in there somewhere.”

You felt yourself let out a laugh.

“Oh yes! She is!” The voice announced, your figure getting closer to Steve but watching at an eye level now, “Whimpering at her dumb luck probably. Never even once felt me inside her all this time. Best, dumbest host, ever!”

 _HEY!_ you hear yourself say but your voice never makes it out.

“Who the hell are you?” Clint barked over the turbulent airwaves and alarms going off in the Quinjet, his bow and arrow at ready to fire any moment, enough to grab your attention- or whatever was driving you now.

“The female we thought died back at Y/N’s place,” Steve answered without a flicker of emotion.

You cooed close to him, almost towering his frame. “And here I thought you were just as dumb as her.”

_I am standing right here!_

“What are you trying to do?” Steve’s blue turning darker than you’d ever seen before.

The tentacles coming out of your back-right where your heart was- made another tiny string that slithered over your shoulder with questionable grace before touch Steve’s three rebellious hair strands, caressing them before moving them back to their place- all the while the smile hovering over your lips and the darkness shadowing your eyes never leaving you.

“Just playing around with this body. Having fun till it gets boring. Till you all get boring too, I guess.”

“Then come out of her and let’s play,” Sam shouts.

You cock an eyebrow, your gaze still holding onto Steve’s as the shiny strands of alien origin flicks the hydraulics to shut the only exit behind them.

“You really don’t know what you’re dealing with here,” you threaten as the muck builds up around your legs.

“We intend to find out,” Sam announces before taking out his gun.

Before you can even finish your tired remark of ‘really’ at the soldier, an arrow is caught inside the muck covering the exit, blasting off half the alien goo.

And that does it for you. Menace takes over your face as you move towards Clint at twice the speed you can run at but Steve catches you from behind, getting an elbow to his chest that flies him to the back in return.

Clint’s hands are blocked by the muck as he is marked with a blow to his chest, sending him directly into the windshield behind him while Sam tries to tackle you down. His body is sent upwards into the carrier’s roof and before he can hit the floor, you watch your goo covered foot land a kick on him to send him flying towards Clint.

Just as you can feel yourself get up, Steve is over you, pinning you down to the ground with his heavy arms.

“Y/N! Can y-aah!” The muck strings win again as Steve’s thrown off into the window by them.

Every time they come at you- even together- the strings, with a life of their own, fend off all attacks while throwing them in every direction like a bunch of ragged dolls.

“You can’t get me till you come with the intent of killing me you sorry little things!” The coarse voice vibrated through the Quinjet again.

 _For fuck’s sake,_ you scream _, just punch me and shut this thing off!!_

“Fine. I’m sorry, Y/N.” Sam finds an opening and goes for your jaw with his knuckles, landing a perfect punch that leads to the noise of bones and teeth breaking.

Mind numbing pain sears through you at the impact, making you want to scream and cry all at once.

_I take it back! Go back to tackling me. This hurts! It fucking hurts!!!_

You feel a wry smile cross over your face as the pain first decreases and then disappears, your broken jaw back in its perfect position.

“That’s more like it.”

_No! That’s NOT like it. Shut up, you insane gooey alien!_

Sam’s punches come back, actually making some difference to the fight but the alien dwelling inside you keeps absorbing the aftermath- but never before you felt the impact and the resonating pain- and it keeps going back to hurt them right in front of your eyes.

Clint comes back to grasp you from behind in a headlock, nearly cutting the oxygen supply to your brain, only to be thrown ahead and have his leg twisted and broken into two.

_Stop. Please, just stop._

You can feel the tears welling up somewhere but never coming up inside your eyes as Clint, Sam and Steve’s bloodied faces mark your brain.

Steve gets up, his right side of the face covered in blood from his head wound, and pushes you into the wall with his hand around your throat.

“Let her go,” he commands with a dead tone before his fingers press a certain nerve at the back of your neck with a considerable force, causing the eerie hoarse voice to scream a bit before the strings come for his arms, making him draw his free hand to pick up Clint’s knife and slice them off of him.

And suddenly, like waking up from a dream you are watching as a first person, you find yourself taking the wheel.

“Steve,” comes the first word from your mouth, grabbing the captain’s attention.

Your name escapes his lips in relief and within a flash, the torrents in his eyes clearing the fog for just one moment as he finally grasps the reality that it is, in fact, you. And just when you feel his grip loosen up around you, the y/e/c orbs that had just come back, go dark again, pushing him to the ground and taking the knife from his dumbfound hands.

You feel your hand raise the warm wood handle to land a strike at the man frozen on his knees before you, held by the darkness surrounding him. You hear Clint’s muffled ‘no’ as he lays on the floor cursing the strings weighing down his chest. You also hear Sam’s unforgiving grunts as he tries to get up and use himself as a shield if nothing better, but the muck keeps him in position. You don’t bother hearing what Sam is shouting as the darkness that had just controlled you, now runs through your veins. You don’t bother with anything else. Not even yourself.

You hear Steve say nothing but let out one tired breath- as if he was waiting for this- tearing you apart on the inside.

Your own scream erodes you, breaks you down, burns you up as you feel a sudden splurge of sensations lighting your whole being in the midst of a breakdown.

The bloodied knife lands on the floor of the Quinjet with a loud clatter and nothing but silence blazes through the moments that follow.

.

Natasha and Tony stand speechless as they see the most absurd sight unravel in front of them.

You walk out of the Quinjet, your clothes bloodied but not a scratch on your skin, save for the fangs that still mark your shoulder while the black muck jutting out through your back carries the three Avengers- all three of them unconscious. Your tired y/e/c pupils carry a dead, hollow look as you make your way towards the lab.

Your aching limbs make it through the doorway, staining the glass with the blood on your hands from the impulsive cut you had drawn in the final seconds..

“Sorry,” your dry voice mumbles softly as you take your hands away from the otherwise spotless glass, “where should I put them down?”

While Natasha is still contemplating the reasons of not taking you out there and then, Tony orders Friday to ‘take out three hospital beds’ there and then, making the AI clear a wall to reveal inbuilt makeshift emergency beds.

The muck surrounding Clint and Sam carefully puts them down on your either side while your hands are mindful as you place Steve’s head on the pillow, choosing to remove his long soft golden brown strands- drenched in his sweat and blood- away from his face.

You take a few seconds to register his face in your mind before turning to Natasha.

“Where…where’s the Vault?”

Natasha looks at you for one long moment, deciding something for herself but never giving it away from her blank expression, before she points at a huge circular tank like structure with glass walls sitting right in the middle of the lab.

You look at it and nod. “Thanks.”

Without another word, you walk towards the Vault, press the ‘open’ switch after setting it to lock itself within ten seconds of opening it. The Vault opens with a hiss and you mechanically place yourself inside it.

Just as the tenth second chimes over the structure, you hear it seal around you, finally forcing a breath out of you.

Your mind no longer registers Bruce entering the lab and finding his friends lying unconscious in front of him before turning to your figure that has its back towards him. All the black muck- which entered with you inside the Vault- slowly retrieves inside, leaving you and only you in this circular tank.

Your knees give way, hitting the absurd floor beneath them before your arms too no longer feel like they can hold themselves together. Finally, your cheek touches the floor and a breath stuck like a grape in the throat escapes you. You find your knees curling up to your chest and your arms coming around them to hold them closer than that. And without so much as a simple timely alert from the entities that stand guard at the dams, the floodgates in your eyes open with no forewarning of when they plan to stop.


	6. Chapter 6

The warmth you feel around you takes you by surprise for a moment making you feel your body shift in sleep.

Your fingers register something soft and balmy covering you. It takes a few seconds for your eyes to open, the reluctance of the tired lids fully recognisable to your conscience. A royal blue blanket covers your entirety while your head rests on a soft pillow.

Your head- tipped up to take this in, sure of the fact that you had passed out in cold surroundings inside a glass cylinder- feels a swerve and a piercing ache, forcing it to fall back into the pillow.

One long inhale.

You breathe in a strange essence from the pillow.

Another long inhale.

You feel the memories resurface, driving away the fog of fatigue like a cold, chilly wind and forcing your eyes to open fully; partly because of the rush and partly to make sure you were not in that Quinjet anymore.

The surface you lay on is same as the floor, warm too when your feet- which were still marked with dried blood-touch it. The moment you get up, the makeshift bed goes down and becomes one with the surface underneath you, leaving the blanket and pillow as the only evidence of uncalled gratitude post your existential crisis in the worst sense.

The glass walls are white on your side and black on the opposite arc, split by another glass layer; the black side pretty much a shower temple.

_Grade-a luxurious prison cell with privacy. I’m flattered._

You look around for any buttons or switches, anything that can be used to talk to someone outside this cylinder but find none. With one stretched sigh, you push the glass partition and step inside.

The moment your hands go to the hem of the sweatshirt, Steve’s image comes to your mind filling you with worry, sadness and dread, in that order.

Stripping down his clothes, rostering his lingering scent in your mind, you twist the shower knob and let the water wash away as much of the turmoil as it can, the burning pressure scathing your skin.

The torture by the heated water over your layers somehow feels redeeming and you let it linger for half an hour more.

Everything does seem to be washing away- the blood, the sweat, the remnants of your tears- everything but the mark on your shoulder.

By the time you close the water and wring out the excess from your hair, your skin is pulsating with red all over.

A robe lies in the corner, fuzzy to the touch- blue on the outside while the inside is lined in green. You slide it over your body, feeling it capture the heat radiating out of you. And just as you do, stepping out of the shower temple, the glass division, shower, and the black tiled floor, everything disappears down in the surface, replacing it with the exact replica of the side you stand on.

The black dissolves and you feel the lights over you dim to the same concentration as the ones coming from outside.

The lab.

There are screens showing your name, biodata and vitals in red. One of them displays ‘Categorised as ally/enemy: Unknown’, drawing an aching breath inside your lungs.

There is no soul in sight in the part of the dim lit lab you face till you shift your gaze towards the wall that overlooks the hanger where the Quinjet stands and a screen is playing the recording of the events that happened on the way back.

A familiar figure stands by the window, looking out at the carrier, his arms crossed, his Dorito figure still as a frozen tree.

Watching yourself in a possessed state over the screen while the man- who was basically the reason you were alive- seems to be evaluating your existence makes you turn back into your shell, building up the walls that had lasted longer than any relationship you ever had.

“How are Wilson and Barton?” You hear yourself say.

You feel a shift in his neck before his shoulders move as he inhales but speaks nothing for a moment.

“Recovering,” comes a hoarse reply.

You can clearly see his black shirt tighten around him as his hand curls up into a fist at the side.

“I’m sorry,” your voice falters as your own arms wrap around your torso.

“How are you feeling?” His tone is measured, making you retrieve more into the dark corner of your shell.

“How am I supposed to feel?” The snap in your voice dying as soon as the words leave you.

_He makes you vulnerable, doesn’t he?_

You step towards the glass, waiting for him to turn but not wanting to see his face for the fear of seeing despondency and rejection, your own head playing games with the emotional turmoil inside you.

“Scared,” you finally croak. “I feel scared.”

He finally turns towards you.  
And you feel yourself falling for him all over again.

His blue eyes are dark, dilated in the poorly lit room. His brows turned in a hint of worry and thoughtfulness. His beard hiding the cut that goes down his right cheek, right where the bruise is visible; right where you punched him. His arms hidden under the black sleeves, hiding more bruises from the fractures that you so vividly remember giving him.

He slowly steps towards you, bending down to his side to click something that turns off the recording and shuts the window, making your breathing flutter, the air caught in your lungs.

“How…how are you-how is your-”

He is closer to the glass now, his eyes fixated on you, making you forget where exactly your mind was going with this.

“How is your wound?” He eventually asks, making you mentally touch your shoulder while you hear yourself say, “I don’t have any.”

“The bite mark on your shoulder.”

There is a sudden rush of a cold tidal wave inside you which you cannot seem to place the origin of. Your hands feel heavy as they rise, sliding the robe away just a bit to reveal the torn skin coloured dark; dots looking like miniature passageways to some hollow abyss.

His lose hands at the sight in front of him come together, one thumb pressing over the palm of the other in some calculating thought.

The dots are hidden under the soft fabric as you step closer to the glass, placing your palm over it.

“Are you still…”

There is a gush of emotions inside you as mentally complete the sentence with the most dreaded version.

“Am I still what?” you feel the pitch grow. “Infected? Housing a…a demon inside me?”

“It’s a parasite.”

“That does not make it better.” you nearly hiss at him before finding your composure. You were still sitting in your cocoon, your entire being riding on autopilot right now, not caring what was going on around you except for the eyes of the man in front of you.

This entire time his ocean was not the similar one you had seen before. This one was shallow to the eyes but for some reason felt dreadfully deeper; clearer than the sky but hiding something beneath those clean waters. A part of you was scared. The other one, the one talking did not seem to observe it whatsoever.

_I am finally going insane._

“Do you feel it? Her?”

“No. Not right now, I don’t.”

He doesn’t speak anymore. Neither does he make an effort to come closer and reduce the distance to just the glass between the two of you.

“It’s not my fault, Steve. I had no idea this thing was inside me,” you lament, your eyes welling up with tears.

“Please, you have to understand, Steve, I never meant to hurt anyone.”

The tears fall. “I never meant to hurt you.”

His eyes do not leave you when the movement in his fidgeting hands stop before driving his dense hair back. A deciding breath later he turns towards the screens and clicks a few buttons. The screens that were showing the lab’s live feed, go dark.

“Others don’t feel the same way as me, believe me,” he mentions, coming back to you, his shoulders visibly loose now.

_Steve, what are you doing?_

“What do you feel?” your question is straightforward. “Do you believe what I just said?”

“I believe,” he declares, his stoic figure standing right in front of you as he looks down at your glistened Y/E/Cs, “that Y/N had nothing to do with it.”

You feel your cowering figure pause and straighten in the shell, paying rapt attention to what more he has to say.

“What-”

“You,” his eyes burn at you, sending a fiery spark throughout your body, “on the other hand enjoyed breaking my ribs. Fault is practically your identity right now, darling.”

All breath escapes your lungs as your bewildered eyes look back at him, another tear escaping the trough.

“Steve, what the hell are you talking ab-”

“Save it,” he growls, his voice never rising beyond a limit, “if it was actually Y/N speaking right now, she would have cursed me twice to have not killed her or thrown her down in the Pacific somewhere.”

You- the real you sitting in that shell- breaks in a laugh at the scenario unfolding in front of you, watching the parasite embarrass itself.

That’s right, bitch. I’d rather die than let you out.

Your devastated expressions go blank before Steve; your defeated shoulders squaring up, as you took in a fresh breath, swelling up your chest with some unreasonable pride.

“You really are smarter than your crushing looks, captain,” you moan, you lips bearing a smirk.

“I somewhat get why she likes you?”

His gaze flinches a bit, stretching your smirk further.

“Y/N, she really likes you,” you see yourself claim, feeling like throwing a punch at yourself. “The things she has thought about you, captain. Oh!”

The shell heats up at the humiliation coursing through you while Steve just stands there never faltering his gaze, increasing the flush of shame tenfold.

“It’s quite vivid, her imagination. I can even smell your scent when you are worked up and looking down at her like you would devour her. The way she wants to run her fingers in your hair or chase your lips with hers,” her voice is almost a whispering moan as she steps closer to the glass, “the way she wants to dig her fingers into the skin on your back as you make her scream with pleasure in a hot spring in the middle of a forest.”

 _Stop!_ Is all you can muster from where you sit inside yourself, feeling yourself grin shamelessly.

“So,” you coo, as your hands suggestively stretch the belt around your robe, “what do you say, captain?”

The belt comes undone and your fingers open up the robe wide for the man to see your naked form in full glory forcing the real you to shut your shell, close your eyes and groan.

“Shall we give her something more to think about?”

There is a deafening silence around you for a moment; nothing but the sound of your scared heartbeat, which the parasite has no worries about. A good moment later you hear the hiss of the door opening, making you open your eyes, wishing to take control over your vision as you see Steve’s figure enter the space.

The shell opens a bit as you find his familiar scent enveloping your safe space when he comes and stops right in front of you with negligible space between your bodies.

His eyes don’t leave yours for even a second.

They never linger away to your bare form; completely devouring your gaze with this burning blue surrounding the dilated darkness.

But his hand.

His hands rise up. The fingers graze your right shoulder, causing both parts of you to flinch, burning your skin as the hairs rise up in silent prayer when they travel down your back. The other hand touches the marks left by the parasite’s fangs, tracing every bite as his fingers curl as they reach the nape of your neck- perfect flints over your flammable skin- before travelling back and up into your hair. His pink lips peeking through his beard, inhaling you in completely.

And just like that, you feel him tighten his grip in your hair while the other one is teasing the small of your back, sending the most incoherent vibrations down to your core.

You feel your body rise a little on your toes as it tries to get your cold lips closer to his.

“What are you waiting for, captain?” you hear an erratic whisper.

The fingers leave your back and a smile runs over Steve’s lips.

“Waiting for you to be distracted, you filth.”

A pocket dimension opens right behind you, near his hands, making him grab a black dagger- a blade split into three, twisted and pointed at the ends, almost like a miniature trident- and shove it in your back.

A gasp escapes you while an inhuman wail leaves the other. You feel a rush inside your body as the parasite retrieves through your nerves, turning away from away sensation, leaving all the controls and curling up into a ball somewhere in a dim lit corner inside you, finally allowing you perceive everything first hand- which disorients you for a moment, making you collapse in Steve’s arms.

“Careful now, love,” an unfamiliar voice comes out of him one moment and a dazzling ray of gold shifts over him to reveal someone completely different.

“Who are you?” you ask, finally able to feel yourself speak, the relief quite evident to the God that held you right now, who smirked at you before letting go of your arms to move his behind you to bring up your robe.

“Loki!” Steve shouts from somewhere behind you, his voice seeming distant.

He stands outside the lab’s door, his entire body tensed up in the time it took for him to cover the distance between the common room and the lab when Loki disrupted the feed.

“I am an ally made during the war,” he smiles gently at you, “I heard you needed an expert in parasite removal.”

With one sway of his hand, Loki opens the door and brings back the live feed, coming back to covering your shivering shoulders.

“She won’t disturb you for now,” the green-eyed God declares to you as he carefully works with the belt around your waist to hold your robe.

“And I suggest you should have a chat with her as to why she is keeping you alive,” he whispers in your ear, done with the knot before he hands you over to Steve.

You give him a knowing look and a slight nod before you feel familiar shoulder taking your defeated figure in a tight embrace.

Before Steve can even breathe out the question from his worked up lungs, Loki manages to read his eyes.

“She’s fine. A little shaken by the first-hand embarrassment she had to go through but she will pull through,” the trickster assures him.

“Why did you shut off the cameras?” you feel his voice vibrate near your ear through his chest, your eyes darting towards Loki in mild horror. He reads them. All too well.

Loki narrows his eyes before rolling them at the captain before getting out of the Vault. “Like I just said- the first-hand embarrassment. Nevermind. Here,” he brings forward the dagger from his pocket dimension and hands it to Steve, “in case the parasite tries to be naughty again.”

“Thank you, Loki,” your hoarse voice states, making Steve bring you closer to him.

He says nothing as he looks at you with an evaluating glare.

“Thank you,” Steve too says assuringly, his relieved features on full display for the God to see.

He nods at both of you. “Say it before it’s too late,” he asserts before walking out of the lab, leaving you to ponder upon his statement.

You try to push yourself away from him, your feeble strength clearly nothing in comparison to his.

“Steve, I-” Before you can utter anything more, your brain starts tilting the room.

“Easy,” he whispers as he wraps his arm around you to keep you from falling back, “easy. Here, let me help.”

You feel yourself step away from the floor and rise, realising a bit too late he was carrying you- all of you- in his arms.

“I just woke up. How can I-” your words stop coming out as everything keeps spinning.

“Loki said the parasite keeps on a stable rush when it is active inside you. The moment it is sent into a dormant state you feel like coming down from a high. So, you just need a good night’s sleep and then some food to get back to normal.”

You hear the elevator ding, no longer able to keep your eyes open.

“Steve,” you whisper.

“I’m here, Y/N. I’m right here.”

The elevator dings again and you hear Friday greet you and Steve as she tells him the rest of the Avengers are back from Bruce’s lab and are waiting for them in the common room.

“Friday open the door for me, will you?” is all he responds with.

A click is heard and you feel him slow down his steps before you are gently put over a semi-hard mattress. You hear a familiar whine and feel Stacie’s nails hitting the bedside to watch you.

“I’m fine Stace,” you mumble, making the corgi stop and curl up at the bedside.

You feel the warmth of a blanket with your favourite essence in multi folds all over it before a hand raises your head a bit to plant a cool pillow below it.

A comfortable silence settles around you, making you wonder if you had been left alone again.

“Steve?”

You try to hear his movement while finding a few long breaths in your aching lungs but hear none.

And then you feel the bed dip behind you.

“I’m here,” he finally speaks as you turn towards him, planting one lingering kiss on your forehead, dissolving all your worries for now.

“I’m here. I’m not leaving you.”


	7. Chapter 7

“It’s really dark in here. Literally, as well, I mean.”

You sit down on the floor housing nothing but the endless void.

It feels weird to not see your reflection beneath you. Trying to touch what looks like a floor but all that comes in your hand is emptiness. Pure black emptiness.

“Must be lonely in here,” you ponder to yourself, your eyes trying to find some sort of source of light that was lighting up your existence in this hollowness.

But there was nothing.

You turn back to the only other entity you can see in the dark apart from you. A small blob, all black, but somewhat standing out from rest of the emptiness, rests in front of you at a safe distance. The darkness inside it seems to glimmer sometimes. Either that or your eyes play with you inside the void. Whatever it is, you are glad you can see the creature that had been controlling you all this time.

“Is this normal?” You tilt your head as you look at the blob, your fingers making swirling movements in the non-existent floor beneath you. “For people, you tried to possess to talk to you? You know, have an…intervention of sorts?”

The blob appears to move a bit, its shape forming and deforming. It takes a few moments for you to register it breathing just like you. Nothing else happens for the next few seconds.

“I don’t know how these things go,” you whisper, opening your bent legs and stretching them. Even though you’re in a dream, the cramps feel real. Your arms lean back and you close your eyes, taking in one long breath. “I don’t know why these things go.”

Your muttering breath spreads around you without any idea if it’s actually reaching the hearing organs of that organism.

 _Don’t forget to breathe,_ Loki’s remnant of a  voice lingers somewhere inside your mind from his monologue safely saved in some corner. _Remember, that parasite is inside you. You are in control. Do not let her make you think otherwise_.

Taking in one deep breath to calm down this minute flutter of fear running down your chest, you start humming the first tune that comes inside your head and just like that your feet start to turn with the hum.

“Sing another anime intro one more time and I’ll end you right here,” thunders a hoarse voice from somewhere very close to you, causing you to force open your eyes and watch the familiar fanged atrocity staring you right in your face.

Your heart wants to run back and hide somewhere in the void to scream as loudly as possible in the first three seconds. As soon as the fourth comes, the long breath works, bringing a hint of ease along with a silent jolt that doesn’t let your position falter.

“But intros are good!” You respond ever so innocently, making that creature glower and narrow his wide eyes at you.

“Outros?” You ask, with the purity of a child.

“Is there anything that doesn’t constantly play in your head and isn’t upbeat?” The creature questions furiously, her forced exhale sweeping away your hair like a wind gathered up from inside a bog. It takes you a moment to gather your half-conscious senses to reboot after that smelly encounter.

“Woah, okay,” you state calmly, “I’ll stop as long you talk to me.”

She huffs at you and turns to walk away towards the direction she quite possibly had been moping, curled up and sulking at the possibility of being tricked by the infamous trickster.

“How about we call a truce?” you blabber, not wanting to sit there talking to yourself, giving an open invitation to all those dark corners of your mind to make up things that did not exist in here. “I won’t use that weapon-thing on you as long as you cooperate with me.”

She stops midway, her figure- which you are sure is at least six feet tall- flinches a little before turning towards you with a calculating thought.

You shrug.

“You want a host. I would have been dead within a few weeks if it wasn’t for you. Just my way of thanking you. But I speak this for myself, not for the people out there who were ready to kill you when they had the chance. All I want to know in return is why you and your friend are here on earth.”

The creature covers the distance between the two of you within one step, her eyes curled at the edges seemingly smiling at you as she brings up her gooey claws to caress your cheek. You are sure that the void around you experiences golden lightning at her mere touch, turning the shadowless void into a gold haven for just a second.

Your breath falters. Your shivers quaking the still space surrounding you.

_What in the actual f-_

“What makes you think I want a truce?” she coos, “How can you be sure I won’t kill you when I want to?”

She can already register the change around her, smiling at the unbelievable effect she just had on you.

“Because,” you clear your throat, your shoulders slightly shaking away the buzz surrounding you, “you would have if you had the chance. Loki educated me a lot, actually, when he snatched away the controls from you. He planted this sort of a virtual bug inside my mind that turned on the moment I fell asleep, telling me all about you. So, yes,” you nodded, a tiny smirk creeping over your lips, “I know you are not much of a Bram Stoker’s gooey version of an alien female Dracula when you are on your sanity meds, which is okay. All of us have hard times. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

She pauses.

You watcher her shoulders rise a little, building up some tension along with her fists before letting it all go.

“Curse that wretched trickster.”

__________

A wince reaches Natasha’s ears, making her shut her book so loud that Sam flinches despite sitting five feet away from her.

“For the last time, Clint, stop touching your wounds or I’ll cut your veins off.”

The hall falls silent.

Everyone except the Black Widow is looking at Clint to watch what he does next while his finger is hovering over his bandaged chest, wondering how fast he would be able to run out the door the moment he pressed the point that was throbbing the most.

“Have any of you seen Y/N?”  
Loki’s voice finally breaks the tension in the room as Clint drops his hands and plops back on the sofa, receiving a relieved sigh from Dr Cho and Banner.

“She’s with Steve,” Sam mutters, the ice pack still healing his swollen cheek and eye.

Loki walks about the room, his eyes scanning the skies outside the glass as Natasha’s gaze follows every premeditated cautionary step the God takes around them.

“That son of a bitch better not come back again,” Clint announces with his eyes closed and chest relaxed, “or I won’t go easy on her like the captain.”

“Clint,” Natasha warns him.

“Babe, it’s alright,” Sam interjects her, “he won’t do anything like that.”

But Nat doesn’t lower her gaze, already planning fifteen ways to give him a slow death.

None of them, except Dr Cho, notices Loki still frozen by the glass, his gaze stuck towards the endless clear blue sky over them while his fingers rub against his thumb in some internal forethought of whatever in the blue ocean he is constantly staring at.

“What is it?” the doctor finally asks.

Cho is sure he hasn’t heard her for a moment when suddenly he shifts his gaze towards the crowd inside.

“Where is the captain?” Loki appears genuinely curious before turning towards a confused Helen, “I believe we have a storm coming, doctor.”

“And why is that?” Bruce comes and stands by Cho, resting his arm assuringly around her.

“I don’t know,” Loki almost shrugs before walking towards the elevator, “but I do know there are three entities standing right in the middle of it.”

___________

Steve is still resting by your side, his eyes never leaving your form as he feels a warm wave of sleep wash over him before he is woken up by the dreams of you engulfed in a black mass calling out for help as he is stuck there on the floor of the Quinjet, not able to get up and help you, screaming more at himself than at the gunk swallowing you whole.

And every time he wakes up, he is relieved to find you there in his arms, resting like you were, making it seem like that’s how it always is supposed to be.

He dips his head further into the pillow to once again study your features in the morning light like he did when you first fell asleep yesterday.

He is still not sure what to do with this sudden flicker of a light he had protected in the midst of a hurricane on the wick of a tiny candle that now rests inside his care, filling him with a forgotten warmth.

Your easy breaths are an unintentionally welcoming vision for him, feeling the rise and fall of your chest along with the lightest snores leaving you. Your hand rests on his chest loosely holding on to the black fabric that he wears, making him wonder if it was alright for you to make him your anchor of all the people in this world.

And just as he is watching you with the utmost care, not wanting to soil the purity basking in the first rays of the day, a latent ache brings itself upon the surface.

 _Do I deserve this?_ He wonders to himself watching the curled up light in his arms breathe easy in his presence.

_Will I ever make it right?_

“Loki is here to see you, Captain,” Friday announces just as the door opens, making Steve draw the blanket further over your shoulders before half getting up to fume at Loki’s figure barging in without so much as a knock, followed by Bruce, Natasha and Sam.

“I don’t think we have much time,” Loki declares even before Steve gets the chance to speak, making the Captain all the more furious at his warnings out of nowhere.

As if to prove his point, you flinch a bit violently in Steve’s arms, getting up with a jolt, your eyes opening wide while your lungs try to find air around you.

“They’re coming for her,” you whisper into the cold air.

“Wha-”

Before Steve can complete his question, Loki brings forward his dominant hand and twists it, engulfing it, in green and gold as everyone else who entered the room watches you and Steve disappear right in front of their eyes.

The bed that housed the two of you now sits empty but for the blanket that had covered you and a bewildered Stacie whimpering at the sight you vanishing into thin air.

“What the hell was that about?!” Bruce curses at the God.

Loki gives the room a once over before his eyes stop at Stacie clawing at his feet.

With one finger pointing towards the ground, he makes her sit down and wait for further instructions, evidently catching everyone’s attention.

“That was a warning,” he finally speaks.

“There’s a war coming our way. Trust me, doctor,” he utters before walking out of the room, “you won’t like to hear any possible end to it.”


	8. Chapter 8

“You talked to her? To that…that thing?”  
“Yes. And she showed me an entire alien fleet coming for the earth to destroy it. Inside out.”  
“And you believe her.”  
“They want to kill her, Steve. I don’t think she has any motive to lie.”

You brush away the branches in your way, walking straight through the familiar tall trees you found Steve and yourself dumped in.  
Loki had teleported you and the captain away from the facility, but he had not been generous enough to drop the two of you right next to your house.  
The forest occasionally felt alive with the sounds of a bird chirping here and there, sending a mating call or pointing out the position of predators. The dull green and dirt hue was lit up only by the lone blue bathrobe still covering you-  wrapping the fabric around yourself as securely as possible- and the stench of wet pines was overpowered by Steve’s alert presence right behind you.  
“So she’s been hiding here…in you,” Steve’s hoarse voice concludes as he takes a step to move ahead of you- jumping over the rocks and logs rotting in the middle of the path- to help you cross them in as modest a way as possible.  
“Yes,” you affirm as your voice tries its best not to waver when Steve’s strong pale arms wrap around your waist and thighs- securing the robe under his hold, giving it no chance to slip in a way you don’t like- to pick you up and safely help you land away from the hurdles. Ever the gentleman. Your hands involuntarily wrap around his neck, grazing the back, making both you and he take a moment to still the sudden flicker your bodies feel on each other’s touch.   
“She and her friend had run away from their home because she broke the law and was to be executed,” you continue, trying to hide the colour in your heated cheeks by bringing forth your hand to tuck your hair behind your ear.  
“What did she do?”  
Steve’s blue is bright with specks of silver floating over them, just like a clear shallow part of an ocean reflecting the sun from its surface, competing with the sunset in its full prestige. At that moment your heart wants to wrap his entirety in its strings, keep the man warm, safe, and close. Closer than you want to. Close enough to feel his skin over yours. But the reality stings.  
“She um…” you take those inquisitive crummy thoughts and shove them in a tiny cage in a dim lit corner of your mind, “saw her future.”  
The words make Steve pause, his brooding beard carrying wrinkles of confusion.  
“Her species can alter time. They can travel from one timeline to another. Forward, backward, sideways, you name it,” you sigh and shrug before rubbing your temples with your fingers. “She saw her future and found out that the alphas were using their battalions as pawns while invading other planets. Thousands of her comrades sacrificed just so the ones sitting at the alters could find strong hosts. Her mother helped her escape but not before the general of their army got word of it.”  
A light breeze makes the forest yawn, reflecting the invisible pain and tiredness you are feeling as your brain tries to process and pass the knowledge you had just been bestowed with from a parasite living inside you.  
Steve attempts to let your every word seep in and work through his brain. You know in his lingering pause and concern-filled brows that he is trying to figure out the whats and the hows. But what you don’t gauge is that he has already moved five steps ahead of you in what all you have thought and are probably thinking right now.  
“Come on,” you try to snap yourself out of the low tide of anxiety touching your shores, “I can see my place.”  
“Why did we even bother going back from here,” you mutter to yourself as you start walking in the direction of the familiar white and brown structure peeking through the woods before you feel Steve’s arm catch yours, forcing you to stop.  
“Look at me.” His voice is soft but his words are heavy, already dropping a weight on your chest as you turn to look into his eyes; the searing glare making the weight burn. And at that moment you are your most vulnerable. Naked in the most crucial metaphorical sense. And you cannot even help it. The layers are coming down one by one as his adamant look is burning away the carefully placed curtains. Your skin is feeling the goosebumps. Your lungs are getting tight. Your lips want to say something but are scared of giving your fears away. But turns out they don’t have to hold the secrets any longer.  
“Don’t you dare.”  
 _He knows._  
He has known it since the moment you told him the parasite was in hiding.  
He knows you think the best way to stop the mayhem would be to give yourself up to gooey bastards. Of course, he knows. He is basically the walking example of being the one to catch hands with anything that involves sacrifices.  
“You are not doing this.”  
The words escaping his red lips are final, trying to punch hard at your controversial resolve.  
“Steve, listen to me,” you begin, your voice carrying a soothing balance, “I was going to die anyway. At least I’ll go out doing something for the greater good.”  
His huff and the scrunched nose reflects transparently the emotions of being done.  
“Greater good,” he echoes, licking his lips before deadpanning on you, “you want to give your second chance away by turning yourself up as a sacrificial lamb. That’s your definition of the greater good? What makes you think your death will stop anything?” He steps closer to you, not leaving your arm as he towers over you, making sure your eyes do not fray from his. “What makes you think,” he nearly hisses through his teeth, “that killing yourself will make everything all right?”  
And that darkness you saw in the unlit corners of the facility comes back in his eyes. The familiar beast from that night lurks in front of you in his hollowed blue, making his grasp on your arm just a level tighter but never enough to make it hurt you.  
“Steve-”  
“I lost my best friend because he sacrificed himself for the greater good. He died trying to save this planet and quite possibly the entire universe from being wiped away from existence, Y/N,” he declares right in your face, the sparks of rage burning through his eyes, “and look where we are still! Fighting another threat! Losing! Hurting! Repeating everything! Every. Single. Thing! I have lost him more times than I can count so don’t tell me sacrifice.”  
He moves away from, trying to walk away; trying to leave you with the increasing ache in your heart.  
“Bucky died protecting you, Steve!” You shout, your voice wavering on registering the blurriness in front of your eyes. “At least have the decency to respect the memory of your own best friend. And I’m quite sure you would have done the same if not something twice as fatal as what he did.”  
He stops in his tracks, letting his mouth fall in an utter offence.  
“You know what, you two would have made such great partners,” he shouts back, turning to face you one more time, “because somehow it’s too much when I put myself in harm’s way but it is just reasonable enough to give you a reason to die!”  
“Well isn’t it obvious, you dolt!” you announce, your voice box nearly collapsing.  
“What?!”  
“We want to do it because we cannot see you die!”  
A few birds fly away at the reverberations your voice creates.  
Steve’s wrinkled rage collected in brows is diluted by the weight of your words with every passing second.  
“I have seen my family die too, okay? I have seen my niece and nephew perish right before my eyes before you guys were able to stop Thanos. But I am done seeing people I love die before me. I am done and I am tired and I have started to care about you way too much to even imagine losing you, Steven Rogers.”  
The silence of the forest contains just the sounds of your panting and the crunch of dried leaves under your muddied socks. The only colours apart from you in front of your eyes is Steve’s blue shirt stretching every time he inhales, feeling the ache of your words in his lungs. The mesh of all those emotions leaving you now lies between the two of you, waiting to be tugged at from one side or other. He stands there, shocked, appalled, confused, dazed- probably everything at once.  
 _What did have you done_ , your insides groan.  
“Y/N…” his voice croaks.  
“Don’t,” you interrupt him softly, looking down at your fingers while shaking your head, “you don’t have to say anything. I just…it just came out without a warn-”  
You barely register the gentle cold touch on your cheeks under your undone hair strands. Your eyes scarcely move up to watch the arm come forward to hold your face close. Your ears just catch the that one deep inhale his lungs take. Your lips hardly part to roster the minute impact of his fingers on your cheeks when his hot lips press unto yours; to feel his beard touch your skin, scraping it, letting you know it’s him.  
It’s confounding at first, to feel his lips on yours; nothing like you imagined- better in every possible way. Then when the touch seems to be real, your hand lingers over his jaw before finally wrapping around his neck. Your eyes close themselves to let your other senses heighten; to feel him- to drink him down- in all ways possible.  
Finally, your lips press back on his, letting him know he is not the only one craving the other with such urgent need, letting them linger on each other for a moment longer because even the thought of letting go hurts.  
But you do let go.  
And breathe in the forest air to let yourself know that this is no dream.  
“Steve,” you declare his name before opening your eyes, almost like an affirmation to some divine powers looking over you.  
“I care about you too,” he answers softly, putting every last ounce doubt in your heart at rest. His blue eyes are dark. Dilated. Hungry. Craving. Parched.  
You know- better than ever- that you are the one who can put the beast at rest tonight.


	9. Chapter 9

“House. Now.”  
You don’t let him say another word as you drag Steve towards your house by the corner of his Henley.  
The kiss was wonderful, no doubt about it. But the last three days were a turmoil inside you, literally and figuratively, and Steve was one of the reasons for it. You need more.  
You want more.  
Turns out, so does Steve.  
The longing ache inside him seems to swirl in his belly as he has tasted you now.  
In the silent war going inside him, you seem to be the neutral ground he has found after so long.  
He needs you.  
Letting go of his shirt, you grab his hand and break into a run towards the familiar structure that is your home as the clouds rolling above the two of you start turning grey, the chilled wind ringing the alarms of the incoming thunderstorm.  
Steve entangles his fingers in yours, your burning skin sends electricity coursing throughout his existence, questioning his luck to have found you in this chaos.  
The first hard huge drops fall over your burning skin just as you reach the steps of the porch.  
Without so much as a warning, you bring Steve forward, pushing him with your everything into the door before planting your fervent lips over his, done waiting.

Steve does not mind the visible thirst at all. To your surprise, he welcomes it by digging his fingers into your hips, drawing your body closer to him, the fabric between your fired up skin being the only boundaries for now as he runs his tongue down your throat, chasing every corner, marking it as his.  
He is as ravenous as you by this point, done with the pain and angst building inside him.  
To hell with the world. Right now, you are the only thing he wants to revolve around.  
And the feeling is mutual.  
Your hands are already in his hair, his beard moving against your skin, lighting it up with sparks you feel throughout your being.  
You bite his lips, tasting the rain over the supple pink as you draw your hips over his thigh, moaning deliciously into his mouth while your hands chase the goosebumps under his shirt over his hard muscles, feeling him shiver under your touch.  
 _Oh, the man crumbles_ , a voice inside you calls out but you do not pay heed. There is no need to. Today it’s not the sketches inside your head but the strokes in the reality that you are bound on chasing.  
As your lips part for a painful instant, you notice his blue is dark, darker than the night he appeared like he wanted to devour you.  
His hands move down to your robe, landing on your heated skin, moving to your ass, grabbing it before lifting you up, letting you wrap your legs around his hips.  
His mouth is all over you. His tongue runs up your neck, making you grab his tightened muscles in his arms as he clicks open the door and takes you both inside. Manoeuvring clumsily around the living room, he makes his way to your room, closing the door behind you before gently slamming you into it, driving his aching erection against your needy cunt.  
A broken gasp erupts through your lungs as you respond by your hips over the bulge in his pants.  
“Come,” you state breathlessly, “let me take care of this,” undoing your hold around his hips to stand on your feet.  
Steve stops breathing, his eyes grabbing onto yours, as your hands move down to undo his belt, the brush against his exposed skin making him tremble and his breath erratic, driving you further into an ecstatic swirl.  
Within seconds his pants and boxers are on the floor and you are slowly pushing him back onto your bed. Removing his shirt, you force him down into the white sheets, planting wet needy kisses over his chest, leaving a trail as you move down.  
A crumbled gasp escapes Steve as he feels his length in your hands, the gentle fingers spreading the precum, giving it a pump or two before your tongue is breaking his shell apart bit by bit, letting him moan with the kind of pleasure he does not remember savouring in this lifetime.  
His head is going further down into the pillow while his hand finds your hair as you run his length up and down your throat with an occasional tease around his frenulum, causing him to grunt and shudder, avoiding the overt urge to drive his hips up. Another run of your tongue and his hand is grabbing onto your hair for dear life, making you moan all around him, sending his already swelling cock into a flurry.  
“Hh-w-ai-o-hh-h-”  
Nothing makes sense in his scrambled mind as his brows crinkle up and his mouth opens in a muted felicity, when you curl your lips just a little to barely run your teeth over his length, moaning through your throat again, letting the vibrations work through him, all the while your own core throbs for some attention.  
“S-s-top ’m about tuh-”  
The words don’t find their end.  
  
You feel powerful as you watch the man who has been the cause of your sweet nightmares, your sweats, your shudders, your aching chore- now wet and wanting more- lying under you trying to catch his breath after the pure bliss that you are the cause of.  
Planting kisses on his jaw, you let your tongue run a wet trail by his neck as your teeth tease his sweaty skin before nibbling around the sweet spots over his shoulder.  
Your arms prevent you from falling over him by grounding you when you feel him drive his hips up in between your legs, his hands are working on getting off your robe to let them finally feel your bare skin on his.  
You plan to give him more than that.  
Moving your hips, you let your wet folds get a taste of his heated length, already feeling the waves teasing your thirsty shores.  
And without more delay, you let your needy pussy finally feel the hard cock as it goes inside you. Your breath breaks. So does Steve’s.  
Your back arches, the electrifying rush creeping over you. Your hands ground you as they rest over his chest while his grab your thighs before running up to your ass, digging his fingers in, not wanting to let go.  
Your aching walls crave for friction, forcing you to move, your every sensual movement a slow dance in those blue eyes that do not falter from your perfect form over them.  
Sparks fly at the back of your eyes as Steve’s length runs doggedly over your sweet spots, letting your walls quiver in delectation. The pale fingers dig into your skin every time you come down, creating an eruption of goosebumps all over your surface.  
Steve drives his hips higher into you, your cracked moan filling up the air that has gone colder with the hail bursting down outside your doors and windows.  
His hands wander up as your muscles flex with every move, feeling the peaks and valleys- as you ride him in slow rhythm- giving the much-needed attention to your breasts, massaging them, teasing the nipples, calling them to stand up while he drove harder into you.  
Your pace increases, so does his, the thrusts getting harder, sending you higher, your fingers burning into his skin for an anchor.  
Wild grunts leave your lungs as your walls tighten along his length, the hot ache wanting to burst.  
“Steve,” you call out his name in between the moans that now know no restraints.  
He leaves the messed sheets to sit up and pulls your thighs further towards him in a quick pull that lands your back into your mattress.  
Your legs are wrapped around his hips now. Your lower back has left the sheets to come closer over his thighs as he takes charge.  
Thrusts get harder and faster. His hardness is the perfect blend of pleasure surmounting the needy aches of your starving walls, hitting every corner that can light up inside you and make you audibly squirm under him, call out his name like a sacred chant that has the potential to give you the perfect bliss.  
Steve knows he can.  
And so he does.  
The wilder his hips move, the louder you cry out in ecstasy, positive emotions flowing from every single sensation you feel.  
“Yes,” your heavy breath tries to make a sound when your back arches higher to heighten the fireworks going on inside you.  
The walls tighten on his swelling length, forcing you to ride further into each other; the thrusts getting sloppier, the grunts getting feral; the nails leaving marks of the impact in the moment.  
Steve’s hand moves between your thighs to find your clit, fingers rubbing the swollen bundle the right way as you feel yourself tighten further around him, forcing out positive grunts from his throat while your body tries not to give out till after the climax, your mouth agape, your breath caught in a soft pause, your toes curling up as the edge draws closer.  
“Y/N.”  
That’s it.  
Your name out of Steve’s breathless state breaks the dams. The orgasmic groan echoes through the voltaic air while your limbs shiver violently through the sloppy ride as Steve finds his own orgasmic outburst right after you.  
Slow, hard and shuddering thrusts in between your legs and delicious bites on your wounded shoulder end the man.  
His head finds a place in the nook of your neck to bring his normal breaths back, his beard scratching your skin, sending microscopic sparks all the way down still.  
Your hands find his hair, caressing it as your lips kiss his temple.  
The sweat over the cooling surfaces rolls down with gravity, not bothering in the least the eyes that find each other again. With the softest touch over the others face, feeling the effects they had on the other before a soft kiss seals their unspoken declarations for good.  
Carefully pulling away from you, Steve takes care of you- better than anyone you have been with.  
Pulling out the duvet tucked at the foot of the bed, he pulls it over a tired you and himself before pulling you in his embrace.  
Your arms wrap around his torso- already declaring his wonderful existence your new haven- as he kisses your forehead. burying yourself in his chest that smells purely of him but with ten times the intensity, you feel his arms engulf you perfectly in his flushed cocoon.  
“Steve…”  
Your voice is barely a whisper.  
“Yes, doll?”  
His thumb softly strokes your back, keeping any unwanted meandering thoughts at bay.  
He dips his head to look at you when you don’t say anything for some time.  
“I don’t want to lose you,” your whisper finally breaks.  
His embrace gets tighter around you. You don’t want it any other way.  
“You won’t,” he states softly with a lingering kiss over your lips, “I promise you.”  
You nod at his assurance and pass a smile before resting your head back on his chest.  
The storm crackles outside the bubble of warmth that is your home with the man you have seemingly given your heart to.  
You lie awake to breathe in every bit of his presence before sleep crawls under the covers beside you and lulls you to another place, safe in his arms for now.  
Safe till you fulfil the promise you have made to yourself.


	10. Chapter 10

Peace is a luxury for an untamed mind.

It is an expensive affair to experience, more so when it is more of a relief shower over the desert of chaos; a smooth wave as sacred as an eclipse touching the tired ragged shore. A much-needed opulence that escapes you the moment you question its lifetime in the present.

Your peace sleeps next to you. The pale face of chaotic good is devoid of any line that hints at worries, doubts, stress or even guilt. It just sleeps. The pink lips are parted ever so slightly, a sign of how deep the waters of the ocean of relaxation they are floating in. The freckles that run over his face down his neck and shoulders feel like a trail of angel’s kisses, blessing him with the turbulent energy to carry the weight of the world over his shoulders. The chest heaves and falls languidly, reminding you of the blessed breaths you take next to him.

And just as the tranquillity is swallowed with the blend of a welcoming post-thunder coldness with the new favourite redolence of Steve, the thought of leaving his side cracks the bubble of that sacred bliss in your heart.

_ Bruised by the universe and still so pure _ , you wonder.

Lifting yourself halfway on your shoulder, you plant a light kiss on his forehead and smile when there is nothing but a twitch of his lips that resembles a short smile.

_ You deserve every happiness in this world. _

Moving up and away, your eyes do not leave the figure lying in your bed under the warm covers. It takes a substantial amount of will to turn away, pick up a pair of leggings, t-shirt and a jacket before walking out of the room to dress up. Picking up a knife from the kitchen you whisper ‘no, it’s for me in case I...just relax okay?’ and walk out of the house.

.

“Tony! Are you seeing this?”

Natasha’s voice echoes through Stark’s helmet as he is still trying to take in the four spaceships making an impact on the compound grounds.

“There better not be radioactive slime inside these things,” he quips, already in the air, working through diagnostics.

“You spoke too soon, Stark,” Sam flies up right beside Tony, “look.”

White fanged gooey beasts come out of the spaceships with incoherent cries, stepping on the ground with the stature of wild beasts readying themselves to go hunting.

“Are you sure we can’t call the Captain in?” Clint calls from the facility’s rooftop.

“Do you really think I would’ve sent them away if he was needed here?” Loki comes to stand next to Hawkeye, his battle armour and the horned helmet taking form over him. “Besides,” Loki takes in a lungful, “it’s for the best that he and the lady are away.”

“I cannot believe I am saying this but I agree with reindeer games,” Tony calls out, “Cap needs a vacay and we’re not ruining it because of some goo decided it can walk.”

..Nearly an hour passes by when your heavy breaths are visible in the coldness surrounding you deep inside the forest.

“Okay,” you barely huff out the words through your lungs, “it’s done. Is-is it time?”

_ Yes _ , the deep hoarse voice inside you says.  _ Just a little warning, human, this is going to get real ugly real soon. _

“Yeah, well, I didn’t come all the way out here for a walk in the woods. So just shut up and let’s get this over with.”

The voice does not say anything in return.

“What? No sassy remarks or insults?”

_ You didn’t tell him _ , it states rather softly, shutting you up for good.

Your legs shift your weight over them, your tongue darts out to wet the dry lips while your eyes look for nothing in particular.

“Call them,” your shivering breath commands as you take your hands out of your jacket and ready them by your sides for whatever is about to happen.

A long breath in and the y/e/c eyes turn black, gooey tentacles finding their way out from your back to surround you; cocooning everything below your waist- a beautiful black sea with you in the middle.

.

A grunt escapes Natasha before she finds a footing in the ripped grass to shoot herself over the shoulder of one of the beat using their own staff-like weapons; dropping fusion bombs into their bottomless bodies, already planning four steps forward for the one running towards her wildly flailing his tongue.

“Loki, I’m outta your bombs!” she cries into the comms, running towards the slime before skidding beneath it but not nearly fast enough to escape the claw that catches her by her hair to pin her down with a guttural growl.

The slime slits its invisible lips to display its fangs that part to take in a taste of the Black Widow that struggles with the hold around her neck.

“Get your filthy tongue away from me,” she lets out a low growl with death in her eyes.

The slime tilts its head in mild shock before opening his mouth wide, showing its prey what is the last thing she was going to see when an ominous note breaks through the air and forces it to turn away and look at one of the ships.

Every other beast on the battlefield does that same before low-key grunting in disapproval and leaping towards a singular direction.

“They are retreating,” Clint takes in the site of the ships opening their hatches to let them in lighting up their thrusters.

“Why? Did their mothership said ‘playtime’s over’?” Sam asks as he hovers over the compound to make sure every last one of them is out of there.

“There better not be a giant mother blob in there,” Tony is quick to mention before his eyes go over to capture the expression on Loki’s features.

The God stands on top of the facility looking down at the creatures in some deep thought.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Tony slowly lands right by his side, neither pair of eyes looking away from the short-termed battlefield.

"I don't think it was him," Loki states, turning towards Tony, who's helmet has crawled away from his head as smoothly as it had appeared. "Do you realise what this means?" His whisper carries a weight both of them can only contemplate.

Tony looks like right in the eye. He wants to blame him so badly but he knows it isn't his fault. It is never going to his fault no matter which way he looks at it. His lips are twitching with latent rage inside him but his eyes carry pain, something Loki finds relatable.

"Tony, it's not your fault either," he is quick to assure him.

"Son of a bitch," Tony curses, signalling Loki to follow him, "they both really do deserve each other."

.

The gradual heat brings out pearls of sweat on the pale skin buried deep under the covers and Steve has to shift to find a cooler part of the bed to bury himself in instead. But it isn't till his mind- which in the seventh state of heaven- swirls your colours inside him, the heat of your chest over his, the sweat over your skin drown on his, the hot breath in hair, creating your image in smoke that finally makes him question the absence of that heat near him.

Brilliant blue eyes open and watch the empty side, caressing the pillow softly with his fingers before he turns to the other side to look outside the French window.

The thunder's died long ago but the scars remain. The pit made for your Sakura seems to be overflowing with rainwater. Water drips down from the edges of the porch frame. A sparrow wiggles itself from head to tail and hops on near the window to rest in a small bowl that was supposed to be filled with water for it some time ago.

"Y/N." Steve's voice still carries the density of the soundest sleep he has had in ages. He sits up and runs his hands all over his face, trying to rub away the slumber before getting up and reaching for his boxers.

"Y/N?" He walks out of the bedroom to look in the bathroom and find it empty and dry. The kitchen and living room smell of you but you are nowhere to be found.

His fingers fighting the weird itch over his shoulder turns his attention to this one yellow paper neatly folded over the breakfast table.

The smoothness of the paper somehow feels uncomfortable under his touch. The fold is neat, crisp, patiently done. The unfolded piece looks akin to something taken from some ancient Pharaoh's treasure. The black ink that stains the otherwise sheen surface is a continuous stroke forming one word at a time, nothing less than an angel writing poetry about the one that got away.

_ The one that got away. _

It takes those dark blue eyes some time to bring their focus back on the actual words, while the rest of the body is becoming aware of the eroding emotions, the hard beating of the otherwise strong heart, the latent shiver that flames the insides.

_ I meant it when I said I didn't want to lose you. _

The yellow curves and slides graciously through the air. No sound is heard as it swings to and fro languidly taking its sweet time, teasing the call by gravity and right before it hits the floor, a gust of wind from Steve almost breaking through front door forcing the paper to fly up and away.

He runs straight for the forest, never stopping, his ears sharp, listening to the farthest of satellite calls in the quiet, his head throbbing from all the possibilities going inside his head as his ears catch a distant explosion and alien screeching, making him accelerate further in the direction of the white noise.

The shapes of ships start appearing after a distance and just as he discovers them, they blow up to smithereens, forcing out incoherent wails from creatures nearby.

The scattered alien crawlers are writhing in pain on the ground with their claws scratching at some unknown ache in their brain. One raggedly moves in his direction, forcing the Captain to take a position and land him a blow. But before he can do that, the crawler winces, gasps for air and falls to the ground, going limp.

As surprising as the site is in front of him, nothing beats the shock of watching the woman he just confessed his love to hover mid-air covered in quite possibly the remains of the dead race, her eyes all black, her features experiencing something otherworldly, her arms hanging by her side, limp.

"Y/N!" He calls out her name- half-cry, half-prayer- and he does get a response with the turn of her head.

"Steve," for a flick of a second, the eyes come back to their original glory of unadulterated purity while a smile finds its way on her lips.

"Y/N, tell her to stop!"

His lungs hurt.

Her eyes too.

He doesn't ease his stance.

She doesn't ease her grip.

"I can't," she cries, the break in her voice shattering his heart, "it's too late."

"It's never too late," he grunts and brings out the dagger that Loki last planted in her back.

Immediately the y/e/c go black and the flawless features reek of pure mayhem.

"Walk away, Captain," the familiar hoarse voice comes back but this time with a warning, "she knows what she got herself into."

Steve doesn't pay heed and breaks into a run, forcing a low hum out of her throat before black strands chuck him into the nearest tree.

"Stay down," she whispers before turning back to the few whining beasts that remain, "it's almost over."

Within seconds the last of the fanged beasts are snapped and Steve has to make an effort to reach the middle of the horrid ground right to catch her limp body.

"Oh Ga-Y/N! Hey!"

Barely any life remains in her as she looks up at the man who cradles her just as carefully- but more lovingly this time- as he did when they first met.

"What did you do?!"

Even as he tries, he fails with his rage on watching her face looking at him with every ounce of pride and hope. And an apology.

"Take care of my cherry blossoms," she smiles through the pain her lungs feel even while she speaks.

Her hand comes up the wipe away the tear that has found its way out of Steve's eyes.

She wishes she could tell him it was all okay. She was fine. The pain was slowly fading. But so was his touch.

"And please take care of Stacie. She can be a handful."

Steve's fingers are careful as they caress her cheeks, trying to keep them warm. His head droops down, forcing her to touch your forehead with his.

"Hey," she wheezes, "it's okay. I knew what I was walking into."

He tries to bring out words but fails miserably just as her teary eyes let go of the water with the one last breath inside her.

"And try not to remember me this way."


End file.
